Origins of Mafia

Mafia

Origins

Origins and History of the Mafia "Commission"
By: Richard Lindberg


For years, the FBI blindly denied the existence of a National Mafia “Commission.” To even suggest that a consortium of career criminals representing the interest of twenty-four crime “families” were secretly meeting to define objectives and set national policy invited censure and hot denial from the Bureau.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was finally forced to admit that this shadowy crime cartel was a lethal force in American life following public disclosure of a secret conference of sixty-five ranking mobsters at Joseph Barbara’s sprawling estate outside Apalachin, New York on November 14, 1957.

Astute state troopers, accompanied by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms tax unit, observed several well-known Mafia figures coming and going from the country house of the millionaire president of the Canada Dry Bottling Company of Endicott, New York. Road block...