Operation Underworld
When the East Coast was under threat from Nazi spies and submarines, the US Navy found an unlikely champion: the mafia. But was America’s alliance with the criminal underworld a spying success or big mob con?
How the mafia helped defend the US from the Nazi threat
Just a few months after its explosive entry into World War II, the US suffered another significant naval casualty. USS Lafayette, an 80,000-ton former French ocean liner, caught fire and capsized in New York Harbor in February 1942. Commandeered by the authorities, the ship was in the process of being converted into troop transport when it sank. Happening so soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government immediately suspected enemy sabotage. A congressional investigation eventually ruled the disaster an accident but the incident exposed how vulnerable the East Coast was to infiltration by Axis agents.
U-boats had been spotted patrolling in packs along the coastline. German torpedoes were taking out dozens of merchant ships — on their way to resupply Allied forces in Europe — every month. In June, German agents were captured on Long Island with explosives, maps and details of strategic installations along the waterfront (see ‘Hitler’s Doomed Sabotage Mission’, page 67).
The US had become complacent during peacetime and had dropped the ball as far as military intelligence was concerned. But after USS Lafayette went down, it prompted the head of the Office of Navy Intelligence (ONI), Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden, to launch a counterespionage initiative. He wanted all eyes and ears to the ground in the dockyards.
The trouble was that some of the workers and proliferate criminals in that area, particularly along the piers, were suspected of assisting
Axis spies and saboteurs. Lieutenant O’malley of the ONI later wrote in a post-war report how concerned the US Navy was about sensitive information being leaked to German submarine commanders: “Some weight began to be accorded […] to the possibility that information as to convoy movements assistance in refuelling of submarines might be traced to criminal elements of Italian or German origin on the waterfront.”
The navy wanted to place undercover agents in factories, hotels and bars, and they needed to bring the fleets of fishing boats that worked the waters of the Eastern Sea Frontier onside, too. They needed a network of informants to keep a step ahead of the Nazis but the longshoremen, stevodores, fishermen and other blue-collar workers were suspicious people who would not talk easily to strangers — and certainly not to official-looking government types. So Commander Haffenden had to try a different tack; he’d talk to the real power in the docks — the mafia.
A flurry of clandestine meetings followed as ‘Operation Underworld’ was formulated. On 7 March 1942, senior ONI figures had their first meeting with the district attorney of New York County, Frank Hogan, to discuss the problem. They established the fact that certain underworld figures on the waterfront had knowledge of suspicious activities long before the authorities got wind of them. Concerns were raised about where the loyalties of the mobsters lay but they were quickly assuaged.
The Italianamerican mafia was loyal to the status quo, the mob and America (more than likely in that order). There was no profit in supporting a fascist regime thousands of miles away just because it happened to be in control of the
Old Country. A name of a potentially useful contact came up: Joseph
‘Socks’ Lanza.
Lanza was a capo in the
Luciano crime family (later
Genovese), a well-known racketeer and union boss who had founded Local 359, the labour union for the workers at Fulton Fish Market on the East River waterfront. It was the biggest fish wholesaler on the East Coast and he took a tidy slice of this multimillion-dollar industry through protection rackets and by controlling contracts.
Lanza was powerful, dangerous and connected, but the navy had no moral objection to dealing with a convicted murderer. “We didn’t care about the background of the informer,” Colonel Angelo Cincotta told a 1954 commission into navy-mafia collaboration, “provided he had real information […] the talk was one-way: from the informer to us and never from us to them.”
After a phone call with Lanza’s lawyer, a meeting between the two parties was held at 11.30pm on 26 March. Lanza, his lawyer and assistant district attorney
Gurfein took a taxi from 103rd Street and Broadway to 135th Street and Riverside Park.
Here, Lanza and Gurfein talked for around an hour on a park bench, a location where Lanza felt he wouldn’t be seen and suspected as an informant for the DA’S office.
The meeting was a success — Lanza could help and was willing to. He later passed Commander Haffenden some telephone numbers on which he could be easily reached and Lanza was given a code number and a visitor’s pass to Haffenden’s office, where he met with the commander every week or so.
The Cosa Nostra capo was certainly a useful man for the navy to have in their back pocket. Lanza’s criminal network extended across the waterfront out to the captains of fishing fleets at sea, all of whom were utilised as submarine lookouts, calling in codes with their ship-toshore telephones whenever suspicious activity was spotted. Agents were seamlessly placed in trucking jobs around the ports and on fishing boats, using an introduction from a friendly face and fishworkers’ union books obtained by Lanza. Lanza himself brought useful intelligence from Fulton Fish Market to his weekly meeting with Commander Haffenden.
However, the navy needed to do more than merely stop enemy spies from disrupting the war effort on their own shores — they needed the dirt on Italy: verbal descriptions of places with strategic significance, photos of shorelines to help identify potential beachheads. The ONI needed to speak to those who were born in Italy and might still have family there but this was where Lanza apparently hit a wall.
Lanza controlled Fulton Fish Market. Beyond that, he needed help from others in the various mafia families of New York, but his indictment had led many of those in his criminal network to believe that in dealing with the ONI he was acting as an informant and so they wouldn’t talk. There was a man, however, whose word could open doors for the navy.
Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, chairman of the Commission — the American mafia’s governing body — and head of the Luciano crime family, held sway over the entire New York waterfront. Six years into a 30-year sentence upstate in Clinton Correctional Facility for running a prostitution ring, it’s a testament to his power that, even behind bars, the only impediment to him helping the authorities was that he was a long drive from the city.
Another flurry of meetings occurred: Gurefin spoke with Moses Polakoff, Luciano’s lawyer at his 1936 trial. He had no contact with Luciano
(and seemed to be satisfied with that) but knew a lifelong associate of the mob boss who was powerful mafia man — Meyer Lansky. Gurefin, Lansky and Polakoff then had a breakfast meeting at Longchamps restaurant, Manhattan. Lansky agreed to help and to travel with Polakoff to meet with Luciano, as long as Luciano was moved to a prison closer to the city. Arguably, this move to Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock
“Lanza’s criminal network extended across the waterfront out to the captains of fishing fleets at sea”
also made it easier for Luciano to conduct his business in New York but it certainly cut down on Polakoff’s commute.
Amid great secrecy, Polakoff and Lansky met with Luciano. Prison Warden Morhous was told not to take fingerprints or record their visits in the book and that they must have complete privacy. The mob boss was apparently surprised by their visit, exclaiming, “What the hell are you fellows doing here?” when Lansky and Polakoff entered the holding cell. The situation was explained to him and Luciano agreed to help. Lanza would meet with Luciano, who would tell him who to talk to and what to do, while Lansky would speak on Luciano’s behalf to mafiosos outside of Lanza’s sphere of influence. Both men knew that if Lansky said he was acting in Luciano’s stead, he wouldn’t be questioned.
Polakoff visited Luciano 15 times, sometimes with other members or associates of the mafia, including Jonny ’Cockeye’ Dunn, Willie Mccabe and Jimmy ‘Blue Eyes’ Alo. Every time, Polakoff would sit in one corner of the room reading a newspaper while the men chatted. On several occasions, more than one crook was brought into the fray — on 25 August 1942, a party of seven met with Luciano in prison. These meetings continued right up until of Victory over Japan Day in 1945.
The value of Luciano’s and his associates’ assistance is hard to quantify. The fact that the US Navy relied on help from New York’s mobsters was a source of some awkwardness immediately after the war, especially when Luciano’s sentence was commuted in 1946 — only 10 years into a 30-50 year stretch.
While Lucky’s release was conditional on him being deported to Italy, it caused a scandal. An inquiry was set up and William Herlands, New York’s commissioner of investigation, wrote a 100-page report on the ONI’S interactions with the crime families of New York during World War II.
Early on, it was made clear to these criminals that there would be “no compensation” for their assistance; it was “their duty” to assist the US in their war effort. While helping the navy didn’t cost them anything, the mafia wasn’t known for giving something away for free. So what was in it for Luciano and company?
While Luciano was assured to get out of prison sooner, it’s likely the others knew ‘doing their bit’ would put them in a more favourable light if (or, more realistically, when) they ran into any trouble with the law in the future. It’s also hard to believe Luciano didn’t make the most of his unrestricted access to his crime family to discuss illicit business during their meetings, too. The US defeat of Mussolini was also in the gangsters’ interests — the leader had cracked down hard on the mafia in Sicily. It was a no-lose situation for the mob.
But was Operation Underworld a success for the US Navy? The ONI was certainly a more effective at counter-espionage than it had been. With the mafia on board, they had eyes everywhere in
New York City and particularly in the docklands. More arrests were made, more enemy submarines spotted and the Italian community of New York was able to provide invaluable information on the coastlines of their motherland. Finally, for the duration of the war, the mafia-controlled labour unions didn’t go on strike, so trade and the vital infrastructure of war was unobstructed.
William Herlands put it aptly in the conclusion of his report. The governor who had commuted Luciano’s sentence had been “conservative” in his statement of the mob boss’s contribution to the war effort — that “there can be no question about the value” of Operation Underworld.