TURNING
POINT
Using Intel to Stop the Mob, Part
2
08/09/07
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Joseph Valachi testifies before the Senate on October 1, 1963, showing how he was initiated into the Mafia by having to burn a crumpled ball of paper in his hands while taking the mob oath. AP Photo.
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Capone was history. “Lucky” Luciano’s
luck ran out when he was convicted and deported
to Italy. And Murder Inc. and its professional
hit men were out of business.
The FBI and its partners had scored some
major successes against organized crime by
the late 1940s, but hoodlums and racketeers
were still operating and thriving in certain
big cities—New York, Chicago, Detroit,
to name a few.
During this time, we’d been using
intelligence to paint a picture of criminal
activities, mostly locally on a case-by-case
basis. In 1946, we launched the General
Investigative Intelligence Program—our
first national criminal intelligence initiative—to
survey the crime landscape and gather details
on key players, including mobsters.
By the early 50s, we’d gained (according
to one memo) “considerable information
concerning the background of operations of
hoodlums and racketeers throughout the country,” using
informants, discrete inquiries, and public
sources. We’d also pulled together
intelligence through surveys on the Mafia,
on bookmaking and race wire activities, and
on other criminal rackets.
In 1953, the New York office—facing
rising mobster activity—specifically
asked to open intelligence files on 30 top
hoodlums in the city to get a general picture
of their activities and to keep an eye out
for violations of federal law. On August
25 th of that year, we made it an official
national “Top Hoodlum Program,” asking
all field offices to gather information on
mobsters in their territories and to report
it regularly to Washington so we’d
have a centralized collection of intelligence
on racketeers.
It’s important to understand: at
the time, most racketeering activities—including
gambling and loan sharking—were beyond
our jurisdictional reach. Still, we needed
to build a bank of information to better
understand the threat and to be prepared
if federal laws were broken.
Three key developments would help us further
expose the length and breadth of organized
crime generally and the Mafia specifically
in the years to come.
- In 1957, New York State Police Sergeant
Edgar Croswell discovered a secret meeting
of top Mafioso at the rural estate of mob
leader Joseph Barbara in Apalachin, New
York. We immediately checked the names
taken by Croswell. We had information in
our files on 53 of the 60 mobsters; forty
had criminal records. Croswell’s
discovery led us to intensify our interest
in these figures (not begin it, as some
have speculated) and to arrest mobsters
who violated federal law. In part because
of Apalachin, we realized that local and
regional crime lords were conspiring and
began to adjust our strategy accordingly.
- In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy
created an Organized Crime and Racketeering
Section in the Department of Justice to
coordinate activities by the FBI and other
department agencies against the criminal
threat.
- In 1963, thanks in part to the FBI,
the first major Mafia turncoat—Joseph
Valachi—publicly spilled
the beans before a Senate subcommittee,
naming names and exposing plenty of secrets
about organized crime history, operations,
and rituals.
As the threat became clearer, Congress
began giving us more tools to combat it—including
jurisdiction over more mobster related crimes
like gambling and, in 1968, the ability to
use court-authorized electronic surveillance
in cases involving organized crime.
As a result of these intelligence
efforts and new tools, our campaign against
the mob turned a corner. The next
key piece of the puzzle would come in the
early ‘70s, with the passage of the
Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
or “RICO” statute that would
enable us to take down entire mob families.
More on that later.
Resources:
-
Part 1 of the Series
-
FBI History website
- Organized Crime website
-
FBI Intelligence operations