The FBI - Taking Down the Mafia (Famous Cases of the FBI)

This is a 3,700 word illustrated monograph in the Famous Cases of the FBI series.
The bitter infighting and killing of rival Mafioso in the first two decades of the 20th century left Salvatore Maranzano as “capo de tuti capo,” the “boss of bosses.” Maranzano made Lucky Luciano his second in command, and Luciano thanked him by having him assassinated by four Jewish gunmen of Murder, Inc. With the last of the traditional Sicilian Mafia gone, Luciano, and a handful of Italian-American, and Jewish-American gangsters established a loose national crime syndicate in 1931. With Maranzano who believed in ancient vendettas, secret rituals, and the concepts of honor and shame, now dead, modern Americanized gangsters such as Luciano and Meyer Lansky, reshaped the Mafia, and severed the links to the old world.
With the demise of the Mob in the late 1930s, and World War II raging in Europe, the criminal organization called “the mob” began to grow, albeit off the FBI’s radar. The Nazis, and Communists, were Hoover’s only focus. His reluctance to acknowledge the existence of the mob some say was his fear that his agents could be bribed or compromised.