The Bonanno and Gallo Wars

One would assume that Joe Bonanno was out of the picture for good and was lucky to be alive. It appeared that he was planning to live up to his promise to live out the rest of his days in retirement. But he was really buying time to gather enough strength to again challenge the Commission. With Joe out of the picture the Family wanted to have his son Bill put in charge. To heal any split in the Family, DiGregorio called for a meeting with the younger Bonanno. At the meeting gunfire broke out and an attempt was made to kill Bill removing him as a threat to the rule of DiGregorio. DiGregorio was Gambino's handpicked leader for the Family and Carlo was upset with his failure to carry out his assignment in regards to the Bonannos. DiGregorio was removed and Paul Sciacca was his replacement as head of the Family.

By this time Joe Bonanno had reappeared and planned to set the record straight in terms of Family leadership. While some of Sciacca's men were dining in a public eating place, a gentleman entered walked over to their table and pulled out a machine gun. He then proceeded to spray Sciacca's men with bullets, killing all three. This was carried out in front of a number of witnesses yet the gunman walked out the backdoor. The Banana Wars had begun. Bonanno once again began operations without the support of the Commission. The Commission's response was to withdraw their clemency and put a contract out on both Bonannos. Bonanno's reply was that this time he really was going to retire. After hearing such promises before the Commission carried out a series of bombing attempts on Bonanno, none of which was successful. He would be forced to live in retirement surrounded by bodyguards to make sure no future attempts would be successful. Gambino, appeared to be satisfied with Bonanno out of the way and the attempts on Bonanno life began to fade away.

Carlo Gambino had succeeded in place a number of his people into positions on the Commission and appeared to have created a power base that would allow him to control most dealing to the advantage of his own Family. However, one of his men had become unhappy with his specific role on the Commission and felt he had to do something that would make him more than Don Carlo's man. He found this opportunity in an odd place. He had become quite vocal about the inference that all Italians were somehow involved in organized crime. Taking advantage of the lessons learned from the protest movements and other minority group organizations, Joe Colombo created the Italian American Civil Rights League. He felt that he had found a role in which he could gain more clout in the legitimate world and at the same time milk all the profits he could out the organizations fund. His leading of protests, rallies, and grabbing of headlines did increased his own self worth, but was costing him support from the Commission since he was becoming a little too public. He was warned that he should lessen his involvement in the public parts of the organization and also to share the money he taking from the organization's bank account. But Colombo, who felt he was finally receiving the respect he deserved, failed to back off.

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