A series of meetings betweenSicilian Mafia andAmerican Mafia members were allegedly held at theGrand Hotel et des Palmes inPalermo,Sicily, between October 12–16, 1957. Also called the1957 Palermo Mafia summit, the gathering allegedly discussed the transatlantic illegalheroin trade between theAmerican and theSicilian Mafia. TheFBI believed it was this meeting that established theBonanno crime family from New York in the heroin trade.[1]
This "heroin summit" was described by journalistClaire Sterling: "Although there is no firsthand evidence of what went on at the four-day summit itself, what followed over the next thirty years has made the substance clear. Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are persuaded by now that the American delegation asked the Sicilians to take over the import and distribution of heroin in the United States, and the Sicilians agreed."[2] However, she fails to back this claim with solid evidence, and even has the dates of the alleged meeting wrong.[3]
At the time, although the Sicilian Mafia was involved to some extent in the heroin business in the 1950s and 1960s, it never had anything more than a secondary role. According to theMcClellan Hearings, Sicily was no more than a staging-post in the shipment of French-produced heroin to the US. Sicilian mafiosi did not acquire anoligopoly on the transatlantic heroin market until the 1970s, because they were not initially competitive compared to other criminal groups, in particular theFrench Connection by Corsican groups inMarseille.[4]
The first mention of the "summit" in the United States was during theMcClellan Hearings on October 10–16, 1963. Among the American mafiosi present wereJoe Bonanno, his underbosses and advisorsCarmine Galante,John Bonventre andFrank Garofalo, as well asLucky Luciano,Santo Sorge,John Di Bella,Vito Vitale andGaspare Magaddino. While among the Sicilian side there wereSalvatore "Little Bird" Greco and his cousinSalvatore Greco, also known as "l'ingegnere" or "Totò il lungo",Giuseppe Genco Russo,Vincenzo Rimi and Filippo Rimi,Angelo La Barbera,Gaetano Badalamenti,Totò Minore,Rosario Mancino,Calcedonio Di Pisa,Cesare Manzella,Gioacchino Pennino andTommaso Buscetta.[3][5]
There are no first-hand accounts of the meeting, except for the version of MafiaturncoatTommaso Buscetta, who denied a summit ever took place at all. According to Buscetta, Bonanno did stay at the Grand Hotel des Palmes and received many guests all the time, but there was no summit as such.[6][7] In his memoirs,Joe Bonanno mentions his trip to Palermo, but says nothing about a summit.[8] ProfessorAlfred W. McCoy does not mention the summit in his landmark bookThe Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, a detailed account of the heroin trade after World War II.
According to Buscetta a gathering took place in a private room at the Spanò seafood restaurant on the evening of October 12, 1957, where Bonanno was fêted as the guest of honour by his old friendLucky Luciano.[9] Among the other guests were Bonanno’s underbossCarmine Galante, the brothersSalvatore and Angelo La Barbera,Salvatore "Little Bird" Greco,Gaetano Badalamenti,Gioacchino Pennino,Cesare Manzella,Rosario Mancino,Filippo andVincenzo Rimi, andTommaso Buscetta. According to Buscetta, it was at this dinner that Bonanno suggested to form aSicilian Mafia Commission to avoid violent disputes, following the example of the American Mafia that had formed theirCommission in the 1930s.[6]
The Italian police had been following Luciano and in so doing found out about the meetings. They observed the gatherings. However, the report was buried in some filing cabinet in Palermo. A copy was sent to theFederal Bureau of Narcotics in Washington. Only eight years later the report was used to indict the participants and some of their associates in Palermo.[10]
In August 1965, the Palermo public prosecutors issued 14 arrest warrants and arrested 10 defendants all over Italy at the crack of dawn. Among those arrested were Genco Russo, Garafolo andFrank Coppola. They were charged with criminal conspiracy and narcotics and currency rackets and tobacco smuggling and had been present at the 1957 Palermo summit.[11]
In the end, 17 Sicilians and Italo-Americans associated with the Sicilian and American Mafia were indicted by judgeAldo Vigneri for criminal conspiracy and narcotics and currency rackets. Among the indicted were Bonanno, Bonventre, Galante, Sorge, Magaddino,John Priziola,Raffaele Quasarano, Frank Coppola andJoe Adonis. The trial began on 14 March 1968, after a five-year investigation that uncovered a transatlantic drug trafficking network operating since 1957. Judge Vigneri had travelled to the U.S. to interrogateJoe Valachi, the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to testify against the organisation. The Court of Palermodismissed the charges in June 1968 because of lack of evidence.[12]
What can be said about the events in October 1957 in Palermo is that the gatherings reforged the links between the most Sicilian of the AmericanFive Families, theBonanno Crime Family, and the most American of the Sicilian Mafia families. It was not a conference between "the"Sicilian Mafia and "the"American Cosa Nostra as such, according to historianJohn Dickie.[6] Rather than a diplomatic summit, it was a business convention where heroin trafficking between these two groups might have been discussed, but there certainly was not a general agreement on the heroin trade between "the" Sicilian Mafia and "the" American Cosa Nostra.[6]
In his testimonies to judgeGiovanni Falcone, Buscetta, questioned nearly three decades later and the only participant in the meetings who has spoken publicly about it, consistently avoided the topic of heroin trafficking and his potential involvement in it, and denied that any meeting ever took place. Unsurprisingly, both Bonanno and Luciano did not mention a meeting in their memoirs.[6][13] That said, the amount of arrests and heroin seizures in the years after Bonanno’s sojourn in Palermo did rise significantly.[2][6]
The important result of 1957 Palermo gatherings was that the Sicilian Mafia composed its firstSicilian Mafia Commission and appointed "Little Bird" Greco as its first "primus inter pares".[2][6][14]
