Carlo Gambino: The Banana War, Lucchese’s Fall & The Silent Architect of American Organized Crime
History & Organised Crime
31,440 views
In the mid-1960s the American underworld hit its breaking point. Joe Bonanno vanished off Park Avenue in what the newspapers called a kidnapping and what the Commission quietly treated as a move in a war he had started. His disappearance triggered subpoenas, grand juries, secret sit-downs, and the internal collapse of his own family — the beginning of what history now calls The Banana War.
Behind the scenes, Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese were steering New York’s criminal empire through the fallout. Lucchese was dying from a brain tumor, handing power to Carlo in a series of quiet conversations that marked the end of the old Palermo generation. As Lucchese faded, the Genovese family began tearing itself apart: Tommy Eboli, Mike Miranda, Catena, Lombardo, the Ivy League, the Boiardos — all maneuvering for control while Vito Genovese rotted in Leavenworth.
Across the country, Sam “Momo” Giancana walked into federal buildings and grand jury rooms, dragged into the Bonanno mess while still running Chicago’s rackets. In New England, Raymond Patriarca and Gennaro Angiulo moved their pieces. On the West Coast and in Louisiana, Marcello, Trafficante, Carillo, and the Carollo network watched the Commission reshuffle the board.
When the Commission tried settling the leadership question in 1966, they met at La Stella in Queens — a “Little Apalachin” where thirteen bosses were caught in one room: Gambino, Eboli, Colombo, Marcello, Trafficante, Miranda, Tramunti, Dellacroce, DiGregorio, Tony the Sheik, Gagliano and more. Their arrest blew open the illusion that the Mafia had learned to stay invisible.
Meanwhile, the government finally admitted what Hoover and Senator McClellan had been warning: a national crime syndicate existed — a twelve-man Commission, two thousand executives, and nearly 750,000 men behind union halls, pension funds, construction sites, shipping lines, casinos, nightclubs, narcotics corridors, and political machines. It wasn’t folklore. It was a parallel government.
Inside that world, old names resurfaced. Johnny Dio returned to labor racketeering. Frank Costello’s legacy was resurrected in stone when Carmine Galante blew up his mausoleum. The Canadian pipeline tightened under Cotroni and Rizzuto. Sicilian power shifted in Palermo. And Frank Lucas quietly learned from Bumpy Johnson as the global heroin routes moved from Corsican chemists to CIA-era battlefields.
By the time Tommy Lucchese died in 1967 — after Siegel, Moretti, Anastasia, and Luciano — Carlo Gambino stood alone as the last of the old Palermo crew. The Banana War was still burning, the Genovese fracture was widening, and the American Mafia was transforming into something bigger, richer, and far more dangerous.
This documentary pulls together the full picture:
– Bonanno’s disappearance
– The Banana War
– The Lucchese decline & brain-tumor years
– Genovese family civil war
– La Stella “Little Apalachin” bust
– Giancana’s involvement
– Galante’s return
– Gambino’s rise to chairman
– The national Commission’s structure
– The shift from narcotics to unions, construction & political power
– The CIA-era drug corridors
– The end of the old guard
For decades the government called this “organized crime.”
History calls it something bigger.
A shadow government.
A second economy.
A quiet takeover of America.
Subscribe for more deep-dive true-crime history.
#Gambino #LuckyLuciano #OrganizedCrime #MobHistory #MafiaDocumentary #TrueCrime #TheCommission #AmericanMafia #CarloGambino #CosaNostra #Costello #Lucchese #Lansky #MafiaPower
13 Comments
Don Pepino Bonanno, officialy retited after the end of the "Banana War" on the late '60s, but continuing to command the Family in the shadows, appointing his loyal enforcer, Carmine Galante, as his "street-boss", saw the Joe Clombo's League as a direct threat to his interntional heroin trade. Also, Don Pepino hated Colombo, because it was Colombo, the one who ratted the "decapitation plan" to the Commission, in order to be promoted as the boss of the Profaci Family, causing the "Banana War", which ending with a truce, after Don Pepino's victory on the warfield, with the Commission accepted his terms for honourable "retirement"...
The League's rallies drew massive media attention (e.g., 100,000 at 1970 Columbus Circle), amplifying FBI scrutiny on "Italian" crime—wiretaps spiked, heroin busts rose 30% in NY (1970–1971, per Bureau stats). Galante, obsessed with secrecy (his zips handled 80% of imports), fumed in private: "Colombo's circus is killing the business—feds everywhere now," per 1970 wiretap snippets (FBI NY-60421 cross-ref). Seizures doubled in Bonanno turf (Queens/Brooklyn), costing Don Pepino $20–30M/year in lost product. Colombo dismissed Galante's complaints ("It's for all of us"), but tensions boiled—Galante reportedly called Colombo a "clown" in 1970 wiretaps, blaming League rallies for a 25% drop in heroin throughput (FBI NY-60421 cross-ref).
A 1971 FBI memo notes Galante's "frustration with Colombo's media circus," linking League events to increased surveillance on Bonanno heroin labs. FBI 1971 wiretaps (Colombo task force) capture Carmine Galante venting ("Colombo's circus is killing the dope business". A 1972 FBI memo (declassified 2010s) notes "speculation on Bonanno grudge," but dismisses for lack of wiretap corroboration. No 1971 wiretaps capture Bonanno/Galante plotting, but captures Galante's post-hit complaints ("Colombo's gone; now the feds back off?").
Gambino Family: 450-500 Made Men
Bonanno Family: 300 Made Men (without the secret regime of the "zips"-accounting them too, it were over 400 soldiers, during the "Banana War" the 2/3 of the Family stayed loyal to Don Pepino, the other 1/3, followed DiGregorio, the "zips" were Don Pepino's invisible hit-squads)
Lucchese Family: 300 Made Men
Profaci Family: 200 Made Men
Chicago Family: 300-400 Made Men
During the '60s (or even before), Don Pepino Bonanno, was planning the decapitation of the Commission, by taking out bosses Gaetano Lucchese and Carlo Gambino, who were conspiring to manipulate the dynamics within Cosa Nostra, after Don Vito Genovese's imprisonment and Don Giuseppe Profaci's death (of natural causes)... Geraldo Catena, the appointed "acting boss" of Don Vito, was in some kind of deal with the pair, in order to back him for a slow take over of the Family by betraying the imprisoned Genovese. Don Pepino, who was allied with Don Vito during the '50s, with the purpose of reforming the Old Cosa Nostra, by destroying the Commission system and reestablishing the Rule of the Capo dei Capi (for them, it would had been a power sharing arrangment, bases on regional authority-Sicilians and non Sicilians), decided to take action in order to hit first. However, the plan didn't go as he wanted, due to the stupidness of Joe Maglioco and the betrayal of Joe Colombo, leading to a 4-5 war between the forces of Don Pepino (2/3 of the Bonanno Family) and the forces of former close friend & best-man-now traditore, Gaspare DiGregorio (1/3 of the Bonanno Family), backing by Lucchese and Gambino. During the war, Don Pepino had arranged his "kidnapping", in order to avoid his legal issues and any potential attack, keeping hiding certainly in Arizona, where he had built a legal & illegal empire, already from the '40s. Besides he was "on the mattresses", he had the upper hand in the war, due to his secret weapon, a regime of execution squads all over the country, formed by unknown men from Arizona, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Denver, Montreal and other cities, along of course, with "zips" from the Old Country, all of them, extremely loyal to him... The hit-men, were executed the orders of Don Pepino, with total efficiency, eliminating his targets and causing terror to the DiGregorio faction, along with the 2 bosses, Lucchese & Gambino. According to Thomas Eboli, the pair was about to go into hiding, if Don Pepino would had gone in an open war...
This is an article, noting some crusial events of the so-called, "Bananas War":
"A fusillade fired from a black car last night killed a member of the Mafia family once headed by Joseph (Joe Bananas) Bonanno as he walked near his home in Queens, the police said.
The dead man, Michael Consolo, 64 years old, was the fifth Bonanno family member to fall victim in the last five months to a struggle for control of the family.
The police said Consolo was a couple of doors from his home at 61-05 76th Street, Middle Village, about 8:50 P.M. when the car drove by and the shots rang out.
Consolo had been out buying a newspaper, the police said, and had parked his car after returning to the $40,000, two- family house where he lived. He was shot once in the back of the head, once in the back of the neck and four times in the back, apparently with a .38-cal-iber weapon.
Consolo's wife, Mary, and son-in-law, Paul Canavan, who lives on the floor above the Consolos, were at home but did not see or hear the shooting.
Consolo, the police said, was a known gambler and was believed to have been a book-maker. In 1966 he and three other members of the Bonanno Mafia family served 30-day prison sentences for contempt of court after refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating a shooting spree in Brooklyn in January, 1966.
On March 11, Sam Perrone, described as a lieutenant of Bonanno, was shot dead by two men as he stood outside his trucking warehouse at Leonard and Scholes Street in the Greenpoint section of Brook-lyn. He was a bodyguard and chauffeur for Salvatore Bonanno, son of Joseph Bonanno.
The struggle for control of the Bonanno family began after Joseph Bonanno disappeared in October, 1964, on the eve of his appearance before a Federal grand jury in Manhattan.
Under Indictment
He returned last year and is now under indictment charged with obstructing justice. During his absence, his son and Gaspare Di Gregorio were reported to have battled for control of the family, and several of Di Gregorio's men were shot.
Police sources have said Perrone was shot in reprisal for the shooting of several Di Gregorio men. Last Nov. 10, three men linked to the Di Gregorio faction were killed in a Queens restaurant. Frank (Frankie the 500) Telleri, and two brothers, Thomas and James D'Angelo, were shot by a man with an automatic weapon in the Cypress Gardens restaurant in the Ridgewood section.
Federal and city investigators said then they feared the slayings might open gang warfare for control of the rackets. They speculated that Telleri and the D'Angelos might have been ordered slain in reprisal for the shootings of still other gangland figures in Brooklyn a few weeks earlier"!!!
Carlo Gambino: The Banana War, Lucchese’s Fall & The Silent Architect of American Organized Crime
History & Organised Crime
31,440 views
In the mid-1960s the American underworld hit its breaking point. Joe Bonanno vanished off Park Avenue in what the newspapers called a kidnapping and what the Commission quietly treated as a move in a war he had started. His disappearance triggered subpoenas, grand juries, secret sit-downs, and the internal collapse of his own family — the beginning of what history now calls The Banana War.
Behind the scenes, Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese were steering New York’s criminal empire through the fallout. Lucchese was dying from a brain tumor, handing power to Carlo in a series of quiet conversations that marked the end of the old Palermo generation. As Lucchese faded, the Genovese family began tearing itself apart: Tommy Eboli, Mike Miranda, Catena, Lombardo, the Ivy League, the Boiardos — all maneuvering for control while Vito Genovese rotted in Leavenworth.
Across the country, Sam “Momo” Giancana walked into federal buildings and grand jury rooms, dragged into the Bonanno mess while still running Chicago’s rackets. In New England, Raymond Patriarca and Gennaro Angiulo moved their pieces. On the West Coast and in Louisiana, Marcello, Trafficante, Carillo, and the Carollo network watched the Commission reshuffle the board.
When the Commission tried settling the leadership question in 1966, they met at La Stella in Queens — a “Little Apalachin” where thirteen bosses were caught in one room: Gambino, Eboli, Colombo, Marcello, Trafficante, Miranda, Tramunti, Dellacroce, DiGregorio, Tony the Sheik, Gagliano and more. Their arrest blew open the illusion that the Mafia had learned to stay invisible.
Meanwhile, the government finally admitted what Hoover and Senator McClellan had been warning: a national crime syndicate existed — a twelve-man Commission, two thousand executives, and nearly 750,000 men behind union halls, pension funds, construction sites, shipping lines, casinos, nightclubs, narcotics corridors, and political machines. It wasn’t folklore. It was a parallel government.
Inside that world, old names resurfaced. Johnny Dio returned to labor racketeering. Frank Costello’s legacy was resurrected in stone when Carmine Galante blew up his mausoleum. The Canadian pipeline tightened under Cotroni and Rizzuto. Sicilian power shifted in Palermo. And Frank Lucas quietly learned from Bumpy Johnson as the global heroin routes moved from Corsican chemists to CIA-era battlefields.
By the time Tommy Lucchese died in 1967 — after Siegel, Moretti, Anastasia, and Luciano — Carlo Gambino stood alone as the last of the old Palermo crew. The Banana War was still burning, the Genovese fracture was widening, and the American Mafia was transforming into something bigger, richer, and far more dangerous.
This documentary pulls together the full picture:
– Bonanno’s disappearance
– The Banana War
– The Lucchese decline & brain-tumor years
– Genovese family civil war
– La Stella “Little Apalachin” bust
– Giancana’s involvement
– Galante’s return
– Gambino’s rise to chairman
– The national Commission’s structure
– The shift from narcotics to unions, construction & political power
– The CIA-era drug corridors
– The end of the old guard
For decades the government called this “organized crime.”
History calls it something bigger.
A shadow government.
A second economy.
A quiet takeover of America.
Subscribe for more deep-dive true-crime history.
#Gambino #LuckyLuciano #OrganizedCrime #MobHistory #MafiaDocumentary #TrueCrime #TheCommission #AmericanMafia #CarloGambino #CosaNostra #Costello #Lucchese #Lansky #MafiaPower