The Havana Conference of 1946 was a meeting of American Mafia and National Crime Syndicate leaders to determine Syndicate policy, rules, and business interests in the new postwar era. The conference is considered to be the most important US organized crime summit since the 1929 Atlantic City Conference. Decisions made in Havana resonated throughout the US in ensuing decades.
The Havana conference was reportedly convened by mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Delegations representing crime families from across the United States attended. It was held at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana during the week of December 22, 1946.
Background
The conference took place at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. The reported organizer of the Havana Conference was crime boss Lucky Luciano. At the beginning of World War II, Luciano was serving a 30-to-50-year prison term for pandering. In 1942, U.S. military intelligence officers approached Joseph "Socks" Lanza and Meyer Lansky with a proposal for Luciano. At that time, Lanza was one of the Mafia bosses who controlled Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market, its workers, and the docks in Lower Manhattan. Lansky had broader power in cities along the Atlantic Seaboard. Military intelligence was worried about possible Nazi sabotage of docks and other shipping facilities in New York and other East Coast ports. The government told Luciano that if his family was able to protect East Coast ports from sabotage, he would be pardoned at the end of the war and deported to Italy as a free man. Luciano agreed to the proposal and assisted the government.
After the war ended, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey agreed to Luciano's pardon on the condition that he never be allowed back into the U.S. In February 1946, after a lavish farewell party on the ocean liner, Luciano sailed back to Italy. He first settled in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, then moved to Palermo, Naples, and Rome. After being forced out of Rome by Italian police, he finally settled in Naples and immediately started planning a return to the United States.
In early fall 1946, Luciano received a sealed envelope from a recently deported U.S. mafioso, which contained three words, "December-Hotel Nacional." In late September, Luciano obtained two Italian passports issued in his real name, Salvatore Lucania, with visas for Mexico, Cuba, and several South American nations. Luciano was now able to visit the Western Hemisphere and meet with criminal associates from the U.S.
In late October, Luciano traveled from Italy to Caracas, Venezuela, Mexico City, and finally Havana. Lansky greeted his old friend on his arrival in Cuba. Following Luciano's orders, Lansky had organized a conference in Havana the week of December 22 of crime bosses from all over the United States. Lansky quickly suggested that Luciano purchase a $150,000 interest in the Hotel Nacional, a plush casino and hotel owned by Lansky and his silent partner, Cuban president Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. Luciano agreed and the Havana Conference was set.
In December 1946, the Havana Conference started as planned. To welcome Luciano back from exile and acknowledge his continued authority within the mob, all the conference invitees brought Luciano cash envelopes. These "Christmas Presents" totalled more than $200,000. At the first night dinner hosted by Lansky, Frank Costello, and Joe Adonis, Luciano was presented with the money. The official cover story for the Havana Conference was that the mobsters were attending a gala party with Frank Sinatra as the entertainment. Sinatra flew to Havana with Al Capone's cousins, Charlie, Rocco, and Joseph Fischetti from Chicago. Joseph "Joe Fish" Fischetti, an old Sinatra acquaintance, acted as Sinatra's chaperone and bodyguard. Charlie and Rocco Fischetti delivered a suitcase containing $2 million to Luciano, his share of the U.S. rackets he still controlled.
The most pressing items on the conference agenda were the leadership and authority within the New York mafia, the mob-controlled Havana casino interests, the narcotics operations, and the West Coast operations of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, especially the new Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Luciano, absent from the American underworld scene for several months, was especially concerned with the situation in New York. Boss Vito Genovese had returned to New York from exile in Italy and was not content with assuming a minor role in the organization.
The conference begins The Havana Conference convened on December 20, 1946. Delegates were present representing New York City, New Jersey, Buffalo, Chicago, New Orleans, and Florida. The largest delegation of bosses was from the New York-New Jersey area. Several major bosses from the Jewish Syndicate were at the conference to discuss joint La Cosa Nostra-Jewish Syndicate business. According to conference rules, the Jewish delegates could not vote on Cosa Nostra rules or policies; however, the Jewish crime bosses were allowed input on any joint business ventures, such as the Flamingo Hotel.
Luciano opened the Havana Conference by discussing a topic that would greatly affect his authority within the American Mafia; the position of capo di tutti capi ("boss of all bosses"). The last official boss of all bosses had been Salvatore Maranzano, who was murdered in September 1931. By the end of 1931, Luciano had eliminated this top position and re-organized the Italian mafia into "Cosa Nostra", or "This Thing of Ours". A board of directors, commonly called the "Commission", had been formed to oversee criminal activities, control rules, and set policies. Cosa Nostra thus became the top criminal organization within the National Crime Syndicate.
Luciano could easily have declared himself as Maranzano's heir in 1932; instead, he decided to exercise control behind the scenes. This arrangement had worked until Vito Genovese's return from Italy. Officially, Genovese was now just a caporegime; however, he had made it clear that he intended to take control of the Luciano crime family. Since Luciano's deportation in 1946, Luciano ally Frank Costello had been the acting boss of the Luciano family. As a result, tensions between the Costello and Genovese factions had started to fester. Luciano had no intention of stepping down as family boss; he had to do something about Genovese. Luciano also realized that Genovese threatened his overall authority and influence within the American mafia, probably with support from other crime bosses. Therefore, Luciano decided to resurrect the boss of all bosses position and claim it for himself. He hoped the other bosses would support him, either by officially affirming the title or at least by acknowledging that he was still "First Amongst Equals".
At the conference, Luciano allegedly presented the motion to retain his position as the top boss in La Cosa Nostra. Then Luciano ally, Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia seconded the motion. Anastasia voted with Luciano because he felt threatened by Genovese's attempts to muscle in on his waterfront rackets. Checkmated by the Luciano-Costello-Anastasia alliance, Genovese was forced to swallow his ambitions and plan for the future. To further embarrass Genovese, Luciano encouraged Anastasia and Genovese to settle their differences and shake hands in front of the other bosses. This symbolic gesture was meant to prevent another bloody gang war such as the Castellammarese War of 1930–1931. With Luciano solidifying his personal position and squashing Genovese's ambition for now, Luciano brought up discussion of the mob's narcotics operations in the United States.
Narcotics trade One of the key topics at the Havana Convention was the global narcotics trade and the mob's operations in the United States. A longstanding myth has been the supposed refusal of Luciano and Cosa Nostra to deal in narcotics. In reality, only a few bosses such as Frank Costello and the other bosses who controlled lucrative gambling empires opposed narcotics. The anti-drug faction believed that Cosa Nostra did not need narcotics profits, that narcotics brought unwanted law enforcement and media attention, and that the general public considered it to be a very harmful activity (unlike gambling). The pro-drug faction said that narcotics were far more profitable than any other illegal activity. Furthermore, if Cosa Nostra ignored the drug trade, other criminal organizations would jump in and eventually diminish Cosa Nostra's power and influence.
Luciano himself had a long involvement in the drug trade, starting as a small time street dealer in the late 1910s. In 1928, after the murder of Arnold "The Big Bankroll" Rothstein, Luciano and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter took over Rothstein's large drug importation operation. Since the 1920s, Cosa Nostra had been involved in drug importation (heroin, cocaine, and marijuana) into North America. In the 1930s, the organization started transporting narcotics from the East Asia Golden Triangle and South America to Cuba and into Florida. The American mob had a longtime association with the government of Cuba concerning gambling interests such as casinos along with their legitimate business investments on the Caribbean island. This put them in a position to use their political and underworld connections to make Cuba one of their narcotics importation layovers or smuggling points where the drugs could be stored. They were then placed on sea vessels before they continued on to Canada and the United States via Montreal and Florida among the ports used by Luciano's associates.
With Luciano's deportation to Italy, he had the opportunity to import heroin from North Africa via Italy and Cuba into the US and Canada. Luciano made connections with Sicily's biggest bosses such as Don Calogero "Calo" Vizzini of Villalba who assisted the Allies' invasion of Sicily and had the greatest political connections of all the Sicilian bosses. Also, Don Pasquale Ania, a powerful boss in Palermo who had connections to legitimate pharmaceutical companies because large-scale heroin manufacturing in Italy was legal at the time.
During the Havana Conference, Luciano detailed the proposed drugs network to the bosses. After arriving in Cuba from North Africa, the mob would ship the narcotics to US ports that it controlled, primarily New York City, New Orleans, and Tampa. The narcotics shipped to the New York docks would be overseen by the Luciano crime family (later the Genovese) and the Mangano crime family (later the Gambino). In New Orleans, the operation would be overseen by the Marcello crime family, led by Carlos "Little Man" Marcello. In Tampa, the narcotics shipments would be overseen by the Trafficante crime family led by Santo Trafficante, Jr. The Havana Convention delegates voted to approve the plan.
Luciano built a massive drug organization spanning Italy and America. One of Luciano's narcotics lieutenants in Siculiana, Sicily was his old associate from New York, Nicola "Zu Cola" Gentile who oversaw all drug operations in the Agrigento province for Lucky Luciano and his partner Don Giuseppe Settecasi, the capo-provincial of Agrigento. A top Luciano lieutenant in the "Caneba Network" of mainland Italy was Antonio Farina, who would ship the narcotics to their U.S. partners in New York's Mangano crime family including Albert Anastasia, Frank "Don Cheech" Scalise, Jack Scarpulla, Peter Beddia and Matthew "Matty" Cuomo.