Organized Crime Control

There is no consensus on the definition of the term organized crime, but it is generally thought of as either a business that primarily engages in an ongoing pattern of illicit activity, or a syndicate that regulates the operations of such businesses. Frequently, the notion of structure and the ability and willingness to use force and corruption to attain economic advantage are seen as indispensable attributes of such businesses or groups.

Today, the term Mafia, which properly refers to a specific group indigenous to Sicily (and that is also known as “the Mob”), is often used generically to refer to any group engaged in organized crime or, indeed, other conspiratorial behavior. Although there were, and currently are, numerous other criminal syndicates, U.S. law enforcement tended historically to focus on Italian American groups and developed its approach to combating organized crime from its experiences in doing so.

During the first few decades of the 20th century, crime in the Little Italys of America received little attention from law enforcement. Indeed, for a long time, the FBI denied the Mob's very existence. Whatever enforcement existed was at the local level, where, in the 1930s, Tom Dewey and Frank Hogan became known as the Rackets Busters, using electronic surveillance; pioneering legislative reform; and convicting major underworld leaders, corrupt public officials, and labor racketeers.

By the beginning of the 1950s, changes were beginning to occur. The Kefauver Committee hearings in 1950 and 1951 awakened the public to the scope of the problem. In 1957, after several well-publicized shootings and a national meeting in Appalachin, New York, the FBI began to use non-evidentiary intelligence bugs and wiretaps to gather information. In 1963, underworld figure Joseph Valachi testified before a Senate committee and explained the inner workings and structure of Italian American organized crime. He was asked the name of the organization.

• A. Cosa Nostra.
• Q. That is in Italian?
• A. That is “Our Thing” and “Our Family” in English.

Significantly, Cosa Nostra is not a subsidiary or subdivision of the Sicilian Mafia. Instead, it is a distinctly American organization that, although drawing on Mafiosa traditions, developed in response to the unique social forces and culture of the New World. Nonetheless, those who comprised Cosa Nostra at its inception were the possessors of 19th-century old world values. Like the Mafia, Cosa Nostra was an [Page 310]“honored society.” The ties that bound its members together were originally those of kinship and respect, as well as the duty of omerta, the traditional code of silence, which was first broken publicly by Valachi.

Valachi's testimony occurred just as Attorney General Robert Kennedy had revitalized the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section (OCRS) of the Justice Department, modeling it on the Hogan Rackets Bureau. When he left that position following the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, the program was allowed to wither.

Shortly afterwards, however, G. Robert Blakey, a former member of Kennedy's OCRS, became chief counsel to John McClellan, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Blakey understood that with layers of insulation protecting the Mob higher-ups from direct involvement in criminal activity, there were logically only three ways of developing evidence of their incriminating conversations—be a participant, have a participant cooperate, or overhear the conversation. Legislation designed to achieve those objectives followed.

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