Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (25 page)

While it is tempting to draw comparisons between the triads and the Italian Cosa Nostra, the differences between the two are substantial. The Cosa Nostra may be Italian at its core, but in the past it has strategically partnered with other ethnic
groups, particularly Jewish and Irish criminals. Triads, in contrast, remain defiantly Chinese in membership and culture; unlike Italian-based criminals, who make no distinction among the individuals and organizations they may target, triads select only Chinese as their prime source of income. While some collusion between triads and both the Cosa Nostra and Japanese Yakuza has occurred, triads have retained the most independence and secrecy of the three secret criminal elements.

Another key difference between triads and the Mafia concerns structure and discipline. As anyone exposed to
The Godfather
movies or an episode of
The Sopranos
can attest, the Italian organized gangs are as rigidly structured and tightly controlled as any corporation (or were, as we shall see in the next chapter). Mafia members must receive approval from the authority level directly above before engaging in any money-making activity, and agree to forfeit a portion of the profits to the same authority. Neglecting or defying this rule can lead to severe punishment.

Triads are not nearly as rigid, and the concept of passing approval down the line to workers and passing profits back up the line to bosses is totally absent. Here's how one member of Hong Kong's notorious 14k triad described his arrangement to an Australian parliamentary crime investigator during an interrogation procedure:

I was not required to pay any percentage of profits to the 14k leadership. Triads do not work that way. Triad members do favors for each other, provide introductions and assistance to each other, engage in criminal schemes with each other, but triads generally do not have the kind of strictly disciplined organizational structure that other groups like the Italian Mafia have. For example, a triad member would not necessarily be required to get permission from the dragonhead of his triad to engage in a particular criminal job…. On the other hand, on… traditional Chinese holidays, such as Chinese New Year, triad members traditionally give gifts to their “big brothers” or “uncles” who often are officers in the triads.

An argument can be made that triads practice greater finesse than Mafia members, whose penchant for brutality is legendary. Triad enforcers may be just as direct, but they often couch their threats in subtle warnings before taking murderous actions. One Hong Kong businessman who chose to defy triad threats was sent the severed head of a dog, perhaps by enforcers impressed with the celebrated scene, incorporating the severed head of a horse, from
The Godfather
. Only when he failed to heed this threat was he stabbed to death several days later.

Their restricted association makes the triads doubly difficult for Western law enforcement groups to penetrate. Chinese communities in North America are among the most insular of all ethnic groups, with justifiable suspicion of outsiders probing into their culture. As a result, reaching triad leaders involves penetrating two layers of defense: the general cultural barrier erected by all Chinese against foreigners, and the secrecy veil drawn over the triads themselves.

Another complication for law enforcement officers has been the ability of the triads to compromise local police forces, especially in Hong Kong. For many years prior to the handover of Hong Kong to the mainland government in 1997, the Royal Hong Kong Police lacked any form of criminal intelligence system, and appeared to play down the size and impact of triads in the colony. Only a detailed study in 1983 revealed the true extent of the secret groups. The report also disclosed an enormous level of corruption in the rhkp, including long-term collusion between senior police officials and triad leaders with regard to drug trafficking. Many rhkp officers grew enormously wealthy through their triad connections and, according to rcmp sources, more than a few emigrated from the colony to Britain and Canada in advance of the communist takeover in 1997, bringing their riches with them and settling down as respectable affluent businessmen.

The arrival of mainland rule in July 1997 also sent triad members abroad to avoid the inevitable crackdown, but many observers familiar with the level of corruption under the communist
regime expect that the triads have since achieved their old levels of influence. One difference is critical, however. Under British rule, the few triad leaders who were caught and convicted faced prison terms. If the Beijing government applies the same policy in Hong Kong as it applies on the mainland, senior triad members can expect to be punished with a bullet in the back of the head.

The Hong Kong triads may now be Beijing's responsibility, but their influence extends literally around the world, although with varying impact. In Britain, the National Criminal Intelligence Service conducted a study of triad activities in that country under the unimaginative code name Project Chopstick. While the 1996 ncis report noted that four triad societies were operating in Britain, it concluded that none was controlled from Hong Kong, and thus the groups were not part of an international criminal conspiracy. Victims of the triads, the study reported, were usually small businesses operated by Chinese immigrants who often avoided reporting crime to British authorities. Nor, the study claimed, did triads play a significant role in the country's drug trafficking, contrary to situations in Australia, Canada and the U.S.

In 1988, an Australian government study estimated that 85 to 95 percent of all heroin entering that country was controlled by Chinese triads. Ten years later, however, a U.S. investigation indicated that triad dominance had been reduced by competition from Southeast Asian countries and their organizations, primarily Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar) and the Philippines.

During the 1970s and 1980s, most high-quality heroin entering North America originated in Turkey and was shipped to Marseilles for processing before being routed to the U.S. (the famed French Connection), with distribution controlled by the Mafia. The emigration of triad leaders from Hong Kong in the 1990s enabled the Chinese to assume control of the networks. By-passing Marseilles, which had once handled the bulk of the material, the triads established routes either through
Amsterdam or directly to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver before importing the drug to its ultimate market, the U.S. Most investigators identify the 14k triad as the primary source of the drug.

In the end, however, the triads’ methods may be their undoing. In the North American drug market, their dominance has been challenged by violent new Vietnamese gangs who dismiss tradition and mystique in favor of raw physical intimidation. The Vietnamese have long been considered more ruthless and aggressive than other Asian groups, a tradition that began with their first infiltration of North America during the 1980s. As one former rcmp drug squad officer explained: “The leaders of the early gangs came out of the aftermath of the Vietnam war. These guys were already hardened. They might have been army-trained or street criminals, but when (North Vietnam) took over, first they settled in refugee camps, then they had to fight and survive long enough to get to Canada or the U.S. without a penny to their names. They had already seen death and violence on a grand scale and they figured they were lucky to live through that experience, so they really had little to lose.”

In many cities, triads actually withdrew from some criminal activities rather than clash with the more violent Vietnamese, preferring to focus on Chinese businesses and individuals exclusively and leave the rest of the market to the newcomers.

The future of the Chinese triad secret societies remains cloudy. Some speculate that the rising economic power and continuing high levels of corruption in China will produce a corresponding increase in triad activity there, in spite of that country's policy of conducting swift executions of high-level criminals. Others suggest that triads have flourished, to some degree, as a result of China's historical subservience to foreign powers, and with its growing economic clout and international influence, the triads may return to their historical emphasis on cultural concerns.

Whichever way the triads evolve, they will retain the secrecy and structure built over 2000 years since the Red
Eyebrows banded together to overthrow a domineering emperor. Of all the secret societies active in the world, the triads remain engaged in a cultural and linguistic environment that few Westerners can begin to fathom.

EIGHT

THE MAFIA AND COSA NOSTRA

WISE GUYS AND BUSINESSMEN

NOTHING DISTINGUISHES THE MAFIA FROM OTHER SECRET
societies more than
omerta
, its rigid code of silence. And nothing more clearly tracks the decline in the Mafia's discipline and status, in America at least, than the contrasting actions of two high-level members: Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, head of a notorious gang of hired killers, and 400-pound Joseph (Big Joey) Massino, don of New York's once-powerful Bonanno crime family. Buchalter died in 1944, seated stolidly in an electric chair. Sixty years later Massino dealt his own organization a potential death blow in a manner that would have driven the short-fused Buchalter into a state of apoplexy.

Between them, they trace the fall of one of the world's most powerful secret societies from a zenith of authority and dominance down to a band of disorganized thugs, many of whose exploits would be humorous if they were not so deadly.

Omerta
, like the Mafia itself, was born not from the machinations of a criminal mastermind but out of the desperate necessity of middle-class Sicilian families seeking control over their own lives. Like triads and Templars, the appalling behavior of the Mafia and its various progeny is actually rooted in good intentions.

The most easily recognized country in any atlas of the Mediterranean region is Italy and its boot-shaped peninsula. The toe of the Italian boot ends barely twenty kilometers from the shores of Sicily, making the island appear as a distended soccer ball being eternally kicked across the sea. The image is apt;
due to its strategic location, Sicily was the object of invasion, colonization and exploitation by powerful outside interests for hundreds of years. Sicily proved vital to Mediterranean trade and colonization, an important port for merchants and military expeditions traveling to and from North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Adriatic.

Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, Sicily endured a chain of invasions, each leaving an indelible mark on its people and culture. The spread of Islam brought Arab raiders to its shores in ad 826. The Muslims proved relatively tolerant of the existing society, permitting non-Muslims to practice their own religion, and their influence on Sicilian culture lies at the root of two Mafia qualities maintained to this day.

One was the position of women in society. Until the arrival of the Muslims, Sicilian society functioned much like others living under Judeo-Christian influence, with women playing a relatively important role in family decision making. In comparison, Islamic law subordinated women. After their arrival, decisions within the family and within the culture generally were made by men, an attitude that took deeper root in Sicily than in other Christian nations that experienced Islamic influence, and one that continues down to this day.

The Arabs also brought a sense of internal justice. Lacking a system of enforcement to deal with criminal acts, Islamic forces depended upon personal responsibility to avenge crimes. These two qualities—limited rights for women and an obligation to seek vengeance for personal redress—remained imbedded in Sicilian society long after the departure of the Islamic invaders.

In ad 1000, a wave of invasions brought Normans, who replaced Islamic influence with an imposed feudal system in which vassals owed their allegiance and lives to their landlord. Each lord dispensed justice in his own manner, producing a patchwork system that left native Sicilians angry and confused. Out of control of their own destiny, and subject to the whims of outsiders, the Sicilians turned inward, embracing the assumption
that nothing and no one was to be trusted except immediate family. Only family provided hope for security and justice, and a man could commit no more outrageous crime than to break his loyalty to his own family. With this presumption, the seeds of the Mafia were sown onto fertile ground.

For hundreds of years Sicily remained a pawn of foreign powers. In 1265 Pope Clement iv, acting in his own interests, declared Charles of Anjou, brother of French king Louis ix, the new king of Sicily. Arriving with a large, powerful army and intent on totally dominating the Sicilians, Charles followed the pope's dictates faithfully, becoming among the most arrogant and brutal of all medieval monarchs.

With the passage of time, seething hatred towards Charles and his French administrators produced a fable that supposedly explains the origins of the term “Mafia.” According to the tale, Sicilian loathing of the French was expressed in a slogan whispered among rebellious Sicilians, who would greet each other with
Morte ala Francia Italia anelia!
(Death to the French is Italy's cry!). To prevent the phrase from being overheard by French soldiers, it was shortened to the acronym
Mafia!
The story is considered apocryphal at best; most dictionaries attribute the word to a Sicilian dialect, meaning “bragging” or “manly,” and in Sicily it does not necessarily imply a criminal identity. Whatever its origins, “Mafia” came to symbolize the secretive and distrustful nature commonly associated with Sicilians.