On June 12, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old former security guard, slaughtered 49 men and women and injured 53 more inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Mateen was then shot to death by Orlando police after a three-hour standoff.
Omar Mateen
It was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in American history–and the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.
The massacre was widely decried as an act of Islamic terrorism. But many others insisted it was simply a hate crime.
Among those opting for the latter: Officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
During his three-hour slaughterfest, Mateen made a call to 9-1-1, pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
On June 20, the FBI released an edited version of the transcript of that call. All references to ISIS were removed.
The Justice Department claimed that it was withholding some details to avoid putting the victims through any more pain–and to not further the propaganda efforts of ISIS.
A firestorm of protest erupted from Republican Congressional leaders, most notably Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Since Mateen’s pledge to ISIS had become widely known, they demanded, what was the point of censoring it in the transcript of his phone call?
An additional reason for the fury aimed at the Justice Department: On June 12, ISIS had, through its news agency, Amag, claimed responsibility for the massacre:
“The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.”
Finally, buckling to pressure, on the afternoon of June 20, the FBI released the full, uncensored transcript of Mateen’s call to 9-1-1.
This was definitely not the finest hour of an organization whose motto is: “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.”
Seal of the FBI
It was not, however, the first time the Bureau caved in to the demands of Political Correctness.
This occurred almost 50 years earlier–in 1970.
And the man who was responsible for this was not a member of ISIS. Instead, he belonged to another, equally deadly organization: The Mafia.
Joseph Anthony (“Joe”) Columbo was the boss of the Columbo crime family, one of the “Five Families” of the Cosa Nostra in New York.
Joseph Columbo
At 45, Columbo was one of the youngest Mafia bosses in the United States. He was also the first American-born boss of a New York crime family.
But, unlike his fellow bosses, he didn’t hesitate to court publicity–or confront law enforcement.
Summoned for questioning about the murder of one of his “soldiers,” Columbo appeared–without a lawyer–at the office of NYPD detective Albert Seedman.
“I am an American citizen, first class,” he blasted Seedman. “I don’t have a badge that makes me an official good guy like you. But I work just as honest for a living.”
Naturally, Columbo denied having anything to do with the death of his subordinate.
In the spring of 1970, Columbo decided to raise his sights. He moved from attacking the NYPD to taking on the FBI.
Throughout most of the tenure of its director, J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI had avoided tackling the Mafia. From the 1920s until the 1950s, mobsters had operated virtually untouched by the most powerful Federal law enforcement agency.
To this day, Hoover’s reasons for avoiding mob enforcement remain unknown. Theories for this include:
- He feared his agents would be corrupted by Mafia bribes.
- He preferred flashy, easily-solved cases like bank-robbery and stolen car rings.
- The Mob blackmailed him with compromising photos of a homosexual relationship with Clyde Tolson, his second-in-command at the FBI.
Then, in 1961, Robert F. Kennedy became Attorney General. As former chief counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee (1957-59) Kennedy had investigated the Mafia’s infiltration of the nation’s labor unions. He had focused especially on its ownership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Unlike Hoover–who denied the Mafia existed–Kennedy was convinced that it did.
J. Edgar Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy
And as the brother to President John F. Kennedy, RFK had the power to needed to force Hoover to attack the crime syndicates.
Throughout the country, the Mafia felt a new heat as FBI agents planted illegal electronic microphones (“bugs”) in their innermost sanctums. Agents openly tailed mobsters–and sent them to prison in large numbers.
Most old-time Mafia bosses decided to take a low profile to avoid the new Federal pressure. They remembered how Al Capone had flaunted his wealth and power–and had fallen victim to the IRS for it.
In April, 1970, Columbo’s son, Joseph Jr., was arrested by the FBI for melting down coins for resale as silver ingots. The Mafia boss decided to retaliate.
He publicly declared there was no such thing as the Mafia. This was a fiction created by FBI agents taking out their prejudice on law-abiding Italian-Americans.
Then he sent members of his newly-formed organization–the Italian-American Civil Rights League–to picket the East Side offices of the FBI.
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THE MAFIA MAKES ‘POLITICAL CORRECTNESS” FASHIONABLE: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on July 5, 2016 at 12:07 amIn 1970, New York Mafia boss Joseph Columbo declared war on the FBI.
The Bureau had arrested his son, Joseph Columbo, Jr., for melting silver coins down into silver ingots. So Columbo, Sr., created the Italian-American Civil Rights League to “combat prejudice against Italian-Americans.”
Columbo appeared at fundraisers and speaking engagements for the League, and gave interviews on talk-shows–such as the one hosted by Dick Cavett.
Joseph Columbo
His message: There was no Mafia–only an FBI slander against decent, hard-working Italian-Americans.
And he sent hundreds of members of the League to picket the East Side offices of the FBI.
His actions generated a massive response from many law-abiding Italian-Americans who felt themselves the victims of prejudice.
During the 1950s and early 1960s Congress had held hearings on the Mafia, making Italian and Sicilian criminals like Vito Genovese and Albert Anastasia household words.
Even more enraging had been the depiction of Italians as the villains on the popular ABC TV series, “The Untouchables.” Each week, Eliot Ness and his squad of Treasury agents wiped out a new batch of Prohibition gangsters–who had Italian names like Al Capone and Frank Nitti.
On June 29, 1970, 150,000 people attended an Italian-American Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle in New York City. Several prominent entertainers and five members of the House of Representatives attended.
Under Colombo’s guidance, the League grew quickly and achieved national attention, establishing chapters in 17 states with over 50,000 members.
Shortly after the Columbus Circle rally, then-U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell banned the words “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” (“Our Thing”) from FBI and Justice Department press releases.
“There is nothing to be gained by using these terms,” said Mitchell, “except to give gratuitous offense to many good Americans of Italian-American descent.”
Seal of the Justice Department
In Albany, New York, then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller instructed the state police to likewise ban such terms.
And the Ford Motor Company, which sponsored the popular ABC-TV series, “The FBI,” also fell into line. While the Bureau’s real-life agents fought the Mafia, its fictionalized agents couldn’t say “Mafia” on TV.
In the spring of 1971, Paramount Pictures began started filming The Godfather, which was to become the most influential movie ever made about the Mafia.
Facing the threat of strikes and violence from the League, the film’s producer, Albert Ruddy, met with Columbo. Ruddy promised that “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” would not appear in a film in which almost every major character was a member of the Mafia.
TV’s “Mission: Impossible”–having moved from deposing overseas despots to stateside criminals–similarly referred to organized criminals as “The Syndicate.”
But Columbo was now facing increasing pressure from two sets of enemies.
The first was the FBI–whose agents seethed as they strode through League picket lines near their headquarters at Third Avenue and 69th Street. They were waging war on gangsters, and they resented being called liars and racists.
The second was the Mafia itself. Its older leaders knew there was an all-out Federal drive to destroy the organization. And they feared that Columbo’s in-your-face tactics were goading the FBI and other law enforcement agencies into greater efforts against them.
Of those older leaders, Carlo Gambino, boss of the largest and most powerful Mafia family in New York and the country, was the most important.
Carlo Gambino
Gambino had set Columbo up in his own family in 1964. This after Columbo had raced to Gambino with the news that his own boss, Joseph Bonanno, planned to “whack” Don Carlo and the other four New York Mafia bosses and become the “boss of all bosses” himself.
Bonnano was thus deposed and sent into exile in Arizona, and Columbo found himself a new boss.
Gambino had always lived in the shadows. As Columbo built up the League, Gambino feared that the publicity and attacks on the FBI would rebound against himself and his brethren.
As the date–June 28, 1971–for the second Italian-American Unity Day rally approached, Gambino quietly put out the word: Stay away.
On that morning Columbo posed for photographers at the rally. Suddenly one of them–a black man–exchanged his camera for an automatic pistol and shot Columbo three times in the head and neck.
Joseph Columbo, after being shot
Seconds later, the shooter was covered by an avalanche of men–one of whom pumped three bullets into him.
The shooter was Jerome Johnson, an ex-con who was linked to mobster Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo. The NYPD and FBI believed that Gambino had given Gallo permission to whack Columbo. And that Gallo had used a black man as the ultimate insult to a man he had long hated.
Columbo remained in a vegetative state until May 22, 1978, when he died of cardiac arrest.
There was no third Italian-American Unity Day rally. And the Italian-American Civil Rights League died with Columbo.
Eventually, the Justice Department and FBI went back to using “Mafia” and “La Cosa Nostra.”
And when Francis Ford Coppola made The Godfather, Part II, in 1974, he inserted both words into a scene where Mafia boss Michael Corleone is interrogated by a Senate committee.
For the Mafia, at least, the era of Political Correctness was over.
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