Organized Crime

Two years ago, when the FBI announced the arrest of an accused drug dealer here with alleged organized-crime connections, Breckinridge L. Willcox, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, rejected the idea that the man was a mobster."

A third-generation dockworker from Baltimore was elected president of the International Longshoremen's Association yesterday - the largest union of port workers in North America. Richard P. Hughes Jr., who had been executive vice president of the New York-based union since 2005, replaces John Bowers, who held the post for two decades. The 73-year-old Hughes - the first Longshoreman from Baltimore to hold the top post - was selected in a voice vote at the ILA's quadrennial convention in Florida.

The war on crime is over and we lost. Not that crime rates are rising -- in fact, criminal activity has been declining dramatically for most of this decade. Organized crime, long assumed to be as perennial as death and taxes, has been virtually wiped out by RICO-armed feds. In many cases, sophisticated DNA testing provides unprecedented assurance that the convicts who do the time actually did the crime, prison populations are at record highs.But no one feels safer. Indeed, in "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things" by Barry Glassner (Basic Books, 231 pages, $25)

Dr. Mary D. Ainsworth, 85, a developmental psychologist whose work revolutionized the understanding of the bond between mothers and infants, died March 21 in Charlottesville, Va.Her research contributed significantly to attachment theory, which emphasizes the importance of intimate human relationships, or attachments, in shaping children's development.Red Norvo, 91, who performed with such greats as Charles Mingus and Frank Sinatra and is credited with introducing the xylophone to jazz, died Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif.

William H. Whyte, 81, who helped pioneer the scholarly study of urban human habitats and warned against the proliferation of corporate conformity in his best seller, "The Organization Man," died Tuesday in New York.Monroe "Bud" Karmin, 69, winner of a 1967 Pulitzer Prize in journalism for articles investigating the influence on gambling of organized crime, died Friday in Bethesda of cancer.Working for the Wall Street Journal, he and colleague Stanley Penn won the Pulitzer for an expose about Mafia dominance of gambling in the Bahamas.

"Bound by Honor, A Mafioso's Story," by Bill Bonanno. St. Martin's. 279 pages. $24.95.Mafia buffs and Kennedy conspiracy theorists should be lining up for the latest "inside" story on the American mob, Bill Bonanno's intriguing, entertaining and factually titillating memoir "Bound by Honor."This is not a mob tell-all, but rather a treatise on the demise of the American Mafia told from the perspective of someone, a mobster and the son of a major Mafia don, who witnessed and experienced it firsthand.

"Gangbusters: The Destruction of America's Last Mafia Dynasty," by Ernest Volkman. Faber and Faber. 256 pages. $24.95.Former Gambino family crime boss John Gotti, a.k.a. the "TefloDon," is doing life without possibility of parole at hard-time Marion Federal Penitentiary, which sums up how far the godfathers have fallen. But justice was a long time coming. For decades, the FBI's war on organized crime ("OC") consisted of rounding up the usual suspects (mainly gamblers and numbers writers) and chalking up stats.

JAMES P. HOFFA will do his surname and his union a favor by ending what his late father began. James R. Hoffa molded the Teamsters into a powerful force in the 1950s and 1960s, but not without strong mob ties.The younger Hoffa, who won election to the presidency of the 1.4 million-member Teamsters, is greeted with considerable suspicion as he prepares to assume the helm.To escape the public's distrust and federal oversight of his union, Mr. Hoffa must prove convincingly that the union has freed itself of all links to organized crime.

WASHINGTON -- A group of the nation's largest health insurers sued the tobacco industry yesterday, seeking to recover billions of dollars they paid to treat smoking-related illnesses.Blue Cross-Blue Shield plans from more than 35 states -- including Maryland -- alleged that the tobacco industry violated a law that has long been used against the Mafia.They also accused the industry of hiding information about nicotine's addictive properties and of marketing to children.The health plans may seek as much as $10 billion in damages for every year that they had to bear the costs of smoking-related illnesses, which could be decades.

ROME -- One of Italy's top experts on the Mafia has been named the United Nation's leading official on international crime.Pino Arlacchi, who is also a member of the Italian Senate, will become undersecretary-general and director of the organization's Vienna, Austria, offices, where the U.N. anti-drug program and others are based.A sociologist and the author of several books on Italy's powerful criminal organizations, Arlacchi, 46, has been closely involved with Italian law enforcement in its all-out war against organized crime.

Amy Jo Lyons does not appear easily daunted. As the new chief of the FBI's Baltimore office - which oversees Maryland and Delaware - Lyons is only too aware of the devastating crime rate of the area's biggest city, one of the worst in the country. "It's a huge task," Lyons said yesterday as her third week at the helm of the regional office drew to a close. "I see there's a great need for strong law enforcement, and we're ready to fill it, along with our partners. It means there's a calling for us to be here."

MITCHELL MARS, 55 Mob prosecutor Federal prosecutor Mitchell A. Mars, who sent Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and other big-name mobsters to prison, died Tuesday. He had been battling lung cancer since shortly after last year's Operation Family Secrets trial, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago said. The trial ended in September with the conviction of Lombardo and other top organized crime figures. Mr. Mars led the organized crime unit in the U.S. attorney's office for 15 years and won convictions against mobsters Albert Tocco and Rocky Infelice, Cicero town President Betty Loren-Maltese and others.

A third-generation dockworker from Baltimore was elected president of the International Longshoremen's Association yesterday - the largest union of port workers in North America. Richard P. Hughes Jr., who had been executive vice president of the New York-based union since 2005, replaces John Bowers, who held the post for two decades. The 73-year-old Hughes - the first Longshoreman from Baltimore to hold the top post - was selected in a voice vote at the ILA's quadrennial convention in Florida.

CHICAGO -- For anyone who has grown complacent about the danger of terrorism, the incidents in London and Glasgow, Scotland, were supposed to provide a jolt of reality. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy put it, "these foiled attacks are best understood as new rounds in a long, global war, provoked by the challenge of radical Islam." Here was proof that the jihadists are still out there, ready to strike at the moment of their choosing. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff clearly agrees.

ATLANTA -- Organized retail theft is on the rise, according to an industry survey. More than three-quarters of retailers said their stores had been hit by crime rings in the past year, the National Retail Federation said yesterday. The federation surveyed 99 senior loss-prevention executives across all sectors of the retail industry. The trade group also found that 71 percent of retail respondents saw a boost in organized theft, up significantly from a similar survey in 2006, when 48 percent of retailers experienced an uptick.

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico -- The top police officer in this unhinged border city has 300 openings on a 600-member police force, and his fearful greeting gave a big clue about why. "Please, please don't use my name or take a photograph," the interim chief begged. One police chief was killed last year, a second quit in the spring, and no one else appears brave, or foolhardy, enough to work this side of the law in Nuevo Laredo. Mexican President Vicente Fox quietly withdrew the federal police that he had dispatched here with great fanfare last year, leaving the city virtually unprotected in a smuggling war that has claimed 170 lives since January.

The new chief of the FBI's Baltimore office is a 23-year veteran who worked on cases including the infamous shoe-bomber incident and organized crime and is coming from the agency's Albany, N.Y., office, officials confirmed yesterday. William D. Chase, 49, will oversee a FBI office of some 180 agents in Woodlawn, and about 200 administrative personnel in Maryland and Delaware. In an interview yesterday, Chase, who will be special agent in charge, described the move as a natural progression from one of the FBI's smaller offices to one of its largest.

MEXICO CITY - A proposal by Guatemalan President Oscar Berger to establish a Central American rapid-reaction force to combat drug traffickers and gangs is gaining strength, although opponents say it could become a tool of U.S. interests and threaten the region's sovereignty. Several countries in the region are proceeding with plans for such a force, which would include at least 500 soldiers, sailors and pilots. The force would be used to stop drug shipments in the air, on land and at sea while fighting the growing influence of gangs and organized crime in urban centers and in remote drug-trafficking sites.

WASHINGTON - After their wedding guests had streamed into Atlantic City, N.J., for the festivities Sunday aboard the yacht Royal Charm, the happy couple surprised them all - by having them arrested as part of an alleged international Asia-based organized crime syndicate. Unbeknown to the attendees, many of whom came from China for the occasion, the bride and groom were undercover FBI agents. The government said yesterday that the pair had spent four years investigating a sophisticated racketeering enterprise suspected of smuggling into the United States vast quantities of black-market cigarettes, high-tech weapons, Ecstasy, counterfeit Viagra and virtually undetectable counterfeit $100 bills.

William Augustus Bootle, 102, a retired federal district judge who issued a string of historic civil rights rulings in the 1960s, including the 1961 order allowing blacks to enter the University of Georgia, died Tuesday in Macon, Ga. He suffered from heart problems. Among his rulings were ones integrating buses and school systems and ensuring blacks' places on voter rolls. Macon's federal courthouse was named for him in 1998. He signed the University of Georgia order after a weeklong trial that pitted black students Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes Jr. against the school's leaders.