COLUMN ONE : The Mob Against the Ropes : Prosecutors using new laws are cracking <i> omerta--</i> the code of silence--to jail hoodlums. The Mafia is still an ominous criminal force, but has lost much power.

The oath, uttered in Italian by would-be members of La Cosa Nostra, was terse--and stark: “I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta”-- the Code of Silence.

Then, in a centuries-old ritual, each inductee’s trigger-finger was cut enough to draw blood. A holy card of the saint of the controlling family was burned and the men intoned the second part of the oath--again, in Italian: “As burns this saint, so will burn my soul. I enter alive into this organization and leave it dead.”

What distinguished this initiation into La Cosa Nostra from hundreds of others that have been conducted in Mafia strongholds in Massachusetts, New York, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Kansas City and elsewhere in the United States was that--despite the code of silence--the FBI secretly recorded it. “The final ignominy,” as Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh puts it.

The government’s ability to break omerta is instructive. Amid the popularity of movies such as “GoodFellas” and “The Godfather, Part III” the real Mafia is on the ropes in the United States, law enforcement officers say, emerging weaker as an underworld power than at any time since the days before Prohibition.

All across the country, stepped-up government enforcement efforts appear to have dealt severe blows to most of the 24 U.S. families of La Cosa Nostra (which means “This Thing of Ours” in Italian).

The mob, of course, remains a force to be reckoned with. Mafia-related units continue to exert a major influence on much of the nation’s criminal activity--loan-sharking, gambling, narcotics trafficking, weapons possession, counterfeit credit cards, securities theft and money laundering. The impact on American life far exceeds the current estimated strength of 1,700 to 2,500 “made”--formally initiated--members.

But there’s little doubt that prosecutors have gained ground. The key has been skillful use of the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, commonly referred to as RICO, under which prosecutors attack the mob as a criminal enterprise rather than filing cases on a mobster-by-mobster basis. The RICO approach often results in stiff sentences for those convicted. Federal wiretapping, undercover infiltration and witness-protection programs also have helped.

“RICO gives you the ability to pull together the various criminal acts committed by various persons in an organization (and present them) in one courtroom--before one jury and one judge,” says Robert S. Mueller III, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division. “Both the jury and the judge understand the scope of criminal activity,” Mueller says, and they mete out stiff sentences as a result.

Partly due to the new techniques, federal officials say, La Cosa Nostra has been wiped out--or at least rendered practically powerless--in a number of major cities. Among them, officials say, are Denver, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Tampa, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Boston.

In the Far West, where the Mafia never attained the power that it once wielded in the East and Midwest, there are fewer than 10 “made” or “baptized” members each in cities such as San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles.

The mob is still strong in Chicago, where it is known as “the outfit,” or “the syndicate.” There is less attention to initiation rites and other rituals in Chicago, but the organizational structure is similar and “they’re as difficult to penetrate” as their New York counterparts, says Jim E. Moody, who heads the FBI’s organized crime effort. Federal investigators anticipate major indictments of top figures in Chicago during the next two years.

In the New York region, where the mob draws power from its control of crucial labor unions and then forces key industries to pay tribute, federal authorities have removed the top leadership from four of the five families, either through convictions or pending trials. Those are the hierarchies that emerged after the 1987 conviction of the bosses of the five families, who serve as the mob’s national commission, notes William Y. Doran, special agent in charge of the criminal division in the FBI’s New York office.

Success has emboldened federal law enforcement officials. “We’ve come to the point where we want to put a final contract out on the mob,” Thornburgh proclaims.

La Cosa Nostra, however, has proven its ability to regenerate and form alliances with other, nascent organized crime groups. The FBI’s Moody says that it will take another decade of sustained effort to convince aspiring hoodlums that being a mobster doesn’t pay--and to reduce the Mafia to the level of a street gang.

“It’s too early to tell whether we’ve sufficiently hobbled the families so that a resurgence is out of the question,” Mueller concedes. “We have to be sure that new players don’t replace the old ones.”

FBI officials estimate that there are 10 uninitiated “associates” for every “made” member of the mob--either serving on family crews or plying their criminal trade under the monopolistic umbrella erected by the family with whom they associate. Federal prosecutors have established that, beyond operating many businesses without paying taxes, the mob engages in murder, intimidation of witnesses and slow-to-pay debtors, perjury and obstruction of justice.

In the New York area, the Mafia’s alleged influence over the construction and concrete industries and unions such as the Teamsters, laborers and longshoremen is thought to have added 15% to the average cost of putting up a building. And it has had a longstanding corrupting influence on public officials.

Some experienced Mafia-battlers believe more investigative and prosecution resources should be diverted to so-called “emerging groups”--Chinese youth gangs, Jamaican Posses and Colombian drug operators showing up in the United States.

“You always have to go to the emergency, and I think they (the emerging groups) are an emergency,” says Barbara S. Jones, now first assistant district attorney in New York County, who battled the mob as chief of the organized crime unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. They “threaten the public safety on the street,” Jones says. “I think they should be more of a priority than the (Mafia), because of the impact they have on the quality of life in this city.”

The mob, in fact, has joined forces with these groups. In Philadelphia, federal prosecutors report that the Mafia is using motorcycle gangs as “muscle” for dealing in narcotics. In Chicago, Asian organized crime groups attempted to use mob contacts for bribery to fix a murder case.

The current law enforcement approach to the mob is a sharp departure from the past. Moody, who entered the FBI as one of the extra agents provided by the landmark Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 and rose to head its organized crime section, recalls how agents used to focus on suspected Mafia members and look for a criminal violation to prosecute.

That approach achieved limited success, convicting one or two individuals in a case--sometimes three or four in a conspiracy--and sending them to prison “for not too long,” Moody says. “Going to jail didn’t really hurt anything. It increased their reputation and was a kind of career development program” for La Cosa Nostra.

But then came the 1975 disappearance of former Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa--an act that the FBI is convinced was committed by the Mafia to thwart Hoffa’s attempt to regain control of the mob-dominated union. Moody says the Hoffa case served as a catalyst for the FBI to devise a new strategy to address the criminal enterprise and its influence.

The new strategy calls for sustained, long-term investigations targeted at an entire criminal enterprise. Electronic surveillance, undercover infiltration and development of an effective witness protection program that helped overcome the reluctance to testify--first of associates of the mob and then of “made” members themselves--also have played a part in the assault on La Cosa Nostra. The federal witness protection program currently safeguards a record 10 “made” members of La Cosa Nostra.

The change in the government’s approach has led to convictions of key mob leaders and brought them sentences longer than their life expectancies, apparently wreaking havoc in the Mafia’s command structure. “Any organization that has to replace its top leadership suffers from disorganization,” says New York County Dist. Atty. Jones.

When there’s “a real shift in power”--such as when John Gotti replaced the murdered Paul Castellano as boss of the Gambino Family--”the new guy has to rediscover the business of the family . . , has to reestablish the deals” that his predecessor had made, Jones explains. Gotti, accused of murdering Castellano in 1985, is awaiting trial along with other members of the family’s leadership.

The new strategy has had some spectacular successes--most notably the November, 1988, racketeering conviction of Nicodemo (Nicky) Scarfo, a violent and ruthless leader of a mob family in Philadelphia, and 16 other family members and associates.

In that case, prosecutors relied on the testimony of former mob captain Thomas DelGiorno and Nicholas (Nicky Crow) Caramandi, a mob soldier, both of whom provided gripping details of the murders, attempted murders, extortion, drug-dealing, illegal gambling and loan-sharking that constituted the family’s enterprises. Although defense attorneys tried to discredit the two key witnesses, prosecutors introduced hundreds of surveillance photos and bugged conversations--some dating back to 1977--documenting the men’s close ties. In the end, Scarfo received 69 years in various federal prison sentences.

But there also have been some failures. Despite prosecutors’ efforts, Gotti, the most flamboyant of today’s Mafia dons, won acquittals and dismissals of charges three times in the last four years, including one involving a RICO prosecution in which Gotti and six co-defendants were charged with taking part in an 18-year criminal enterprise that included murders, robberies, hijackings, gambling and loan-sharking.

As in the Scarfo case, key witnesses were criminals who testified under grants of immunity or in return for payment and other benefits. But this time, defense attorneys apparently succeeded in undermining the witnesses’ credibility.

Last month, Gotti and three other top figures of the Gambino family were again indicted in a RICO case that includes four murders, a murder conspiracy, gambling, loan-sharking, obstruction of justice and tax evasion. The case is expected to go to trial soon.

The government’s success in breaking omerta seems startling in the face of the ruthlessness and cold-blooded fate that awaits those who “rat” on fellow family members, according to wiretap transcripts.

A transcript of the session, which reads as though it were lifted from the scripts of the GoodFellas or Godfather movies, frames part of a conspiracy charge in the multicount murder, extortion, kidnaping, drug-trafficking and gambling indictments of Raymond J. (Junior) Patriarca and the rest of the top leadership of the New England crime family that bears his name.

On the Patriarca tapes, Biagio DiGiacamo, a capo (captain) in the family, elaborates on omerta : “We get in alive, in this organization, and the only way we gonna get out is dead, no matter what. It’s no hope. No Jesus, no Madonna, nobody can help us, if we ever give up this secret to anybody.”

A government memorandum on the sentencing of Joseph John (Junior) Chilli, a capo in the Bonanno family in New York, notes that there are really two Junior Chillis--one who presents himself as “soft-spoken, even genial,” and the Chilli whose voice is heard on the FBI tapes. “The phrases are coarse, the threats chilling and the intent unmistakable,” the memorandum says. “The defendant’s primary tool is intimidation.”

Not surprisingly, the successful prosecutions have prompted new optimism among federal prosecutors that the Godfather movies may soon be reduced to historical dramas. “If we can take their money and put them in jail, it will show aspiring hoodlums it doesn’t pay to be a mobster--then we’ve won,” the FBI’s Moody says.

But outside experts are far from sanguine. James Jacobs, a sociologist-lawyer at New York University Law School who recently completed work for a major report on mob infiltration of New York’s construction industry, contends that there is no basis for concluding that La Cosa Nostra is on the way out. The Mafia is “a very entrenched feature of American society--extremely adaptable, extremely opportunistic and with a lot of money and resources,” Jacobs declares. “It’s hard to believe they will just wither away and die out.”

“One can understand the inclination to claim victory,” Jacobs concedes, “but it’s too soon to say.”