"Strange Bedfellows" Topic

With spies and saboteurs threatening the New York waterfront, the Office of Naval Intelligence entered into an unusual World War II alliance—with some of the era's most notorious mobsters.

Naval History Magazine: link

Interesting article indeed.

I am familiar with this "Strange Bedfellows" relationship from many tellings of the story over the years.

For those who have not yet checked out the link, it is a very current US Naval Institute article about the relationship between the jewish mafia on the East Coast and US Naval Intelligence during WW2.

My own father, being a Chicago Jew in the liquor industry immediately after the end of Prohibition, wound up having his own stories about some of the more famous/notorious gangsters of that age (namely "King Cohen" of L.A. link ). So stories about these related topics are of particular interest to me.

Thank you for the link, sir!

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

The Mafia are the best "enforcers" because they don't have to follow the law. They are judge, jury, and executioner with plausible deniability for the intel services (at least most of the time). I wonder just how much the Mafia was blackmailing and extorting the government.

Intel agencies are always (or should be) close to organized crime. They need them to "sub-contract" activities they cannot legally commit to and recruit others to do the same.

They generally have no allegiance to their home country. In foreign countries, intel agencies use them to help overthrow their government and guarantee them a "piece of the action" when a new administration is installed. I worked at one of the three letter agencies during the Cold War.

They were also probably afraid of another Black Tom explosion: link

Wolfhag

Thanks for that link to the Black Tom explosion. Very interesting! I have not heard of that incident before.

The relationship between the US Naval Intelligence and New York organized crime figures was in many ways similar. When the SS Normandie burned down to ruin at dockside in Manhattan (an event described in the article linked in the OP), it was generally perceived as an act of sabotage (even if later ruled a welder's accident). So all the antennae went up about German agents.

There was already a history at that point of the Jewish mobsters being enlisted against Nazis. Although not by Naval Intelligence. Meyer Lansky's thugs had been enthusiastically beating up Nazis at "Bund" rallies for several years with the support of the local judiciary.

link

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Let's see: Ships travelling without convoys despite British advice, and sillouetted against a non-blacked out coastline are being sunk, so the Navy is looking for spies and saboteurs among the dockworkers. Why am I hearing echoes of Italian dockworkers shot as Allied spies because the Allies couldn't possibly be reading Enigma-coded messages?

Evidently hunting down imaginary enemies is a lot more fun than changing naval procedure.

Maybe they were just being pre-emptive. After all, the FBI did arrest German spies sneaking into the country.