became special agent in charge of the Detroit bureau, he was given a faded old copy of the Narcotics Bureau's list with an astounding notation: "In 1952, the Narcotics Bureau had the answers but no one would listen ... every LCN [La Cosa Nostra] member we have is on this list, without exception."
Anslinger clearly was a confirmed Mafia fighter long before Hoover finally was forced into the battle, but like Hoover he suffered certain performance defects. His overstated opinion of the dangers of marijuana, for instance, was in the 1960s to raise him to the status of a cult figure in the same way that Reefer Madness was and is a cult movie today. Anslinger can also be accused of following the headlines in the administration of his office. In 1942, only after the United States went to war with Japan, Anslinger reported to the secretary of the Treasury that there was ample proof that Japan had violated its international commitments for years by its promotion of the opium trade and had used drugs as an offensive weapon against countries it was trying to conquer. "Wherever the Japanese army goes, the drug traffic followsГє In every territory conquered by the Japanese a large part of the people become enslaved with drugsГє" He noted this had been particularly true in Manchuria and China.
Like the complete bureaucrat, Anslinger followed every twist in American foreign policy and thus in time found the great drug menace was being masterminded by the Red Chinese, who were succeeded, coincidentally during the Korean War, by North Korea.
Anslinger was hewing to the sure road of popularity. With the arrival of the Kennedy administration, he was to embrace Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In his book, The Protectors, published shortly after the assassination of John Kennedy, Anslinger could not contain his praise for Bobby Kennedy, even lapsing into overstatement: "He [Bobby Kennedy] traveled over the country, calling special meetings with our agents, exhorting them to nail the big traffickers. He would review every case with them personallyГє He kept the prosecutors on their toes and promised the utmost effort in court to bring about convictionsГє" Unfortunately Anslinger also proclaimed: "It was, in large measure, due to his forceful encouragement of our men that we knocked off such public enemies as Vito Genovese, the number one gangster in the United States, Big John Ormento, Joe Valachi and Carmine Galante, and numerous others." The sad fact was that all these men, save the last, had been through the entire prosecution process from arrest to conviction to sentencing to incarceration before Robert Kennedy even took office.
Yet whatever his failings in a quest for popularity and headlines, a peril of the profession among lawmen, Harry J. Anslinger still qualified during his lifetime as the nation's number one and, some would say, only Mafia hunter.
Antinori, Ignacio (?–1940): Early Florida Mafia boss One of the more shadowy Mafia figures in U.S. history, Ignacio Antinori was the most powerful early leader in the Tampa, Florida, crime family. One of the oldest Mafia groups in the country, the Tampa family, through the years, figured significantly in the narcotics trade and simply ignored requests or directives from other crime families to curtail such activities. And no one ever seriously contemplated going into Tampa to do anything about it.
While Antinori's early history may be cloudy there is no doubt that by the 1920s he was one of the major narcotics bosses in the United States. Antinori, connectioned through bribery with officials high up in the Cuban government, godfathered a setup in which Tampa became the American end of a drug pipeline extending from Marseilles, France, through Cuba to Florida. Tampa took care of distribution in Florida and sent on supplies to the Midwest, especially to the Kansas City Mafia, where according to the Narcotics Bureau, it passed under the control of such mafiosi as Nicolo Impostato, James De Simone and Joseph De Luca in Kansas City and Thomas Buffa in St. Louis.
It should not be assumed that Antinori's influence within the Tampa organization was unrivaled. Law enforcement knowledge of the affairs of the Tampa family was limited, and by about 1930 Santo Trafficante Sr. may well have taken over as top boss. Certainly, when Antinori was murdered on October 22, 1940, the operations of the Tampa family went on without skipping a beat. Under the senior Trafficante, the family remained a power in narcotics, smuggling of aliens, loan-sharking and Florida gambling, as well as moving into Cuban gambling.
Apache Indian Job: Mob bombings The bomb, long an underworld weapon, was used first in this country by Black Handers to terrorize victims. Later, in the labor racketeering field and in political campaigns (organized by the Capones), bombs were used as instruments of persuasion. Bombs also came in handy in convincing some businesses to accept the right beer and booze during Prohibition and others to come through with protection money. But, by the mid-1930s the custom fell into general disuse on a wholesale basis; bombings attracted more attention and public uproar than the politicians and police could ignore.
In the 1970s, firebombing came back into vogue with what the underworld called an Apache Indian job,
