SAN DIEGO — “How the Navy defended the Port of New York during World War II, and the way they did it is that they enlisted the help of the mafia,” said San Diego Author Matthew Black.
That's right - mobsters - including Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. Black, who lives in Point Loma, spent a good part of the pandemic combing through thousands of pages of documents. Many included information that had been classified for decades by the federal government.
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“I got cross-eyed on my computer screen,” he said with an animated smile. “I have like 60 tabs open at a time. I need 6 computer screens that I can pull information from here... and some of the scenes got so complicated. You're pulling from 10 sources at a time so it was very challenging.”
On February 9th, 1942, the S.S. Normandie, a French ocean liner, suddenly went up in flames while docked at New York Harbor. It was caused by sparks from a welding torch, but because it happened just two months after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Black says the U.S. Government suspected sabotage.
“Oh my god - there's got to be enemy spies that are working the port - and so it became a big deal for the Navy,” he said.
It was a big deal mostly because workers on the docks were also handling sensitive war equipment and materials.
The Navy needed its people to infiltrate the workforce here - to watch for suspicious activity.
But strong unions made that impossible until the Navy secretly partnered with key members of the Mafia.
“When they asked for their help, they were able to get their men inside, figure out who was the enemy, who was helpful, and the story just evolves from there,” Black said. “It goes to some crazy places.”