LET THE STRATEGY BEGIN
Using Intel to Stop the
Mob, Part 1
06/22/07
![Chicago gangster Al Capone](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20080918015806im_/http://www.fbi.gov/headlines/capone062207.jpg) |
Chicago
gangster Al Capone
|
|
Seventy-five
years ago this December, one Special Agent
B.E. Sackett penned a short article for Bureau
employees on what he called "organized
crime conditions in Chicago."
By
1932, organized crime in the U.S.though
a shadow of what it is todayhad started
to get its legs. Al Capone, who with the help
of the Bureau had just landed in federal prison,
had built an empire of crime in the Windy
City that would continue to morph and grow.
An extensive underground of hoodlums, racketeers,
and gangsters had emerged in response to Prohibition
and was thriving. Hundreds of rackets that
used threats of violence to force businesses
to ante up a percentage of their profits for
"protection" existed throughout
Chicago and other cities. In New York, "Lucky"
Luciano had risen to power in the Mafia and
was beginning to shape it into the structured,
secret society of criminals that we know today.
A
"valuable weapon" against these
criminal rings, Agent Sackett thoughtfully
stated in his article, was "accurate
information"details on the key
players, their interlocking connections, their
tactics and capabilities. He talked about
how Chicago agents had begun building this
base of knowledge, through informants and
other contacts and through an extensive index
of pictures and background on more than "three
hundred of the notorious criminals and members
of their gangs."
He
didn't call it "intelligence," a
concept that was still in its infancy, but
that's essentially what it was. The approach
was strategic, thinking about a criminal network
in larger terms, gathering information and
insights to take out entire criminal organizations
and their support and not just select individuals,
and thus preventing a litany of future crimes.
This
picture of the underworld would grow in the
coming years and yield significant results
for the young Bureau and its partners. We
would begin puncturing these networksexposing
their activities for all of law enforcement,
undercutting their support structures, and
tracking their most dangerous actors and elements
much in the same way that we now do with terrorist
cells plotting attacks on U.S. soil.
A
few examples:
-
In
August 1933, we prepared a detailed analysis
of organized criminals and the various ways
law enforcement had succeeded in stopping
them. We outlined more than a hundred "rackets"
in Chicago that extorted money from electric
sign companies, "candy jobbers,"
dental labs, and others. This analysis helped
paint a picture of the threat for all of
law enforcement.
-
When
John Dillinger was on the run for a violent
string of bank robberies, we put pressure
on the many connections he and his gang
had to all levels of the underworldprecisely
because we had mapped out these connections.
With the extensive cooperation of many police
forces, this allowed us to track his movements
and ultimately generated the leads that
led to his death in a shootout outside a
Chicago theater in July 1934.
-
We
learned everything we could about the enablers
of organized crime: money launderers and
fences, both organized and freelance, who
helped criminals hide their loot from the
law; shady doctors who performed backroom
plastic surgeries to help disguise mobsters
and shyster lawyers who helped shield them
from justice; and the corruption-backed
"spas" and criminal safe havens
in places like Hot Springs, Arkansas, and
St. Paul, Minnesota, that mobsters used
to rest, recruit comrades, and plan their
next moves in relative safety.
-
Working
with our law enforcement partners, we started
building the criminal justice support system
that has enabled a coordinated, layered
attack against both criminal and terrorist
networks, which includes national criminal
records and crime stats
cutting edge
forensic science services
and extensive
training for law enforcement professionals.
In
Chicago and elsewhere, the fight against organized
crime had just begun. And so has our story.
In the next few months, we'll run a series
of articles tracing how we've used intelligence
to take on mobsters and even decimate entire
crime families in different times and different
places over the past seven decades. Stay tuned!
Resources:
-- Bytes
out of FBI History
-- Organized
Crime website
-- Inside
FBI Intelligence Operations