One Mafia faction is for going further. In the event the spotlight hits Costello his number is up. He has so been told by Tony Ricci, alias Goebels, who manages many such things.
We have not seen it, nor have we any confidential information about the contents of the committee’s final report, but we are willing to bet it will be along these lines:
- 1) There is crime.
- 2) No political party has the monopoly on it.
- 3) There seems to be a Mafia.
- 4) Gamblers should pay their income tax.
- 5) Kids should go to Sunday school.
- 6) Communities should appoint Crime Prevention Societies.
- 7) Because of the international situation, let’s forget it and call the whole thing off.
The plight of honest Senator Kefauver is not unique. Wherever possible, the underworld uses such characters to do their dirty work. They fall for it, probably because dreamers and social planners are gullible, not practical like their more conservative brethren. That’s why political bosses frequently back them and surprise semi-suspicious suckers who think they know things.
For instance, when the late Boss Kelly of Chicago, one of the most ruthless thieves who ever lived, thought he saw the handwriting on the wall, he nominated good men to run for Governor and Senator. At no time after Adlai Stevenson went to Springfield and Professor Paul Douglas got to Washington did these Utopians ever open their mouths or do anything, or even complain about the iniquities in Chicago, though we told plenty and a lot of other dirt wasn’t confidential.
He hand-picked as his successor Martin Kennelly, a mild old bachelor who didn’t know when it was Wednesday. This was a “businessmen’s candidate.” The mob and their Democratic sidekicks gave him the business.
Kefauver even has a soft spot for accused Commies. He was one of the seven Senators to vote against the McCarran Bill, which Marcantonio opposed in the House. Douglas, who didn’t have guts enough to vote no, because that would have imperiled Lucas’ chance in Illinois, did hop in to uphold the President’s veto.
The only Senator running for reelection who opposed the McCarran Bill all the way was Lehman, a ticket-mate of mob-backed Pecora and Lynch, an old codger of eminent respectability and Wall Street millions, who is and always was “safe”—he’s too wrapped up in Park Avenue dignity and too flattered by public honors to see or understand that with his silk-gloved hands he pulls hot chestnuts out of the oven for the dirtiest crooks, traitors and political plotters in the land.