Page 65 - All About History - Issue 59-17

Operation Underworld

650,000

Monthly tonnage of transatlantic cargo
lost to U-boats on the East Coast
Enemy sabotage of the USS
Lafayette was widely suspected $20 million

The navy wanted to place undercover agents There was no profit in supporting
in factories, hotels and bars, and they needed to a fascist regime thousands
bring the fleets of fishing boats that worked the of miles away just because it The annual value of the
waters of the Eastern Sea Frontier onside, too. happened to be in control of the Luciano family’s rackets
They needed a network of informants to keep a Old Country. A name of a potentially in Fulton Fish Market
step ahead of the Nazis but the longshoremen, useful contact came up: Joseph
stevodores, fishermen and other blue-collar ‘Socks’ Lanza.
workers were suspicious people who would not Lanza was a capo in the
talk easily to strangers — and certainly not to Luciano crime family (later
official-looking government types. So Commander Genovese), a well-known Number of agents
Haffenden had to try a different tack; he’d talk to racketeer and union boss who in the biggest Nazi
the real power in the docks — the mafia. had founded Local 359, the spy ring busted on
A flurry of clandestine meetings followed labour union for the workers at Fulton Fish American soil
as ‘Operation Underworld’ was formulated. On Market on the East River waterfront. It was the
7 March 1942, senior ONI figures had their first biggest fish wholesaler on the East Coast and
meeting with the district attorney of New York he took a tidy slice of this multimillion-dollar
County, Frank Hogan, to discuss industry through protection rackets and by
the problem. They established the controlling contracts. Number of family bosses in
fact that certain underworld figures Lanza was powerful, dangerous and 7 the 1931 Commission
on the waterfront had knowledge connected, but the navy had no moral
of suspicious activities long objection to dealing with a convicted murderer.
before the authorities got “We didn’t care about the background of the
wind of them. Concerns were informer,” Colonel Angelo Cincotta told a 1954 Number of US ships 175
raised about where commission into navy-mafia collaboration, destroyed or sunk off the
the loyalties of the mobsters “provided he had real information […] the talk East Coast during WWII
lay but they were was one-way: from the informer to us and
quickly assuaged. never from us to them.”
The Italian- After a phone call with Lanza’s lawyer,
American mafia was a meeting between the two parties was
loyal to the status held at 11.30pm on 26 March. Lanza, his
quo, the mob and lawyer and assistant district attorney
America (more than Gurfein took a taxi from 103rd Street and
likely in that order). Broadway to 135th Street and Riverside Park.