The Plan

MIAMI HERALD

Saturday, January 22, 1983

Meyer Lansky is dead at 80. His departure is cause for an odd sadness, not for Lansky, a gangster who had a long run and died in bed. But for the rest of us, because now it will be impossible to discover the full history of the United States in this century. The man who was born Maier Suchowljansky was crucial to that history, and he has gone without breaking the code of silence.

It was Meyer, they said, who nailed J. Edgar Hoover. The way the story goes, Hoover was a homosexual operating in the deepest of closets. Meyer found that closet, had photographs made, and used those photographs as a grant of immunity.

His name is part of our history and our legend. But when the obits ran the other day, there was a sense that the true story was now gone forever.