Valachi hearings
The Valachi hearings, also known as the McClellan hearings, investigated
Overview
In October 1963, Valachi testified before Senator
Valachi had agreed to testify against the mafia and expose its dark past after landing in prison for a heroin charge alongside his boss, Don Vito Genovese. Fueled by anger at his former organization and a fear for his life after receiving the kiss of death from Genovese, Valachi reached out to testify, knowing the only other likely option was death.[5]
A low-ranking member of the New York–based
Valachi testified in vivid and minute detail on his day-to-day life in organized crime in a first-time-ever public account of life as a soldier of
Disclosures
Much of the knowledge accessible to the public today about the American Mafia was first disclosed in Joseph Valachi's televised testimony.[8]
Valachi disclosed that the Mafia was called Cosa Nostra ("our thing" or "this thing of ours" in
He also revealed the organizational structure of the Mafia. Valachi revealed that "soldiers" are organized into "regimes" and led by a "
While revealing the existence of these syndicates and that they were referred to as "families," he also disclosed the names of New York City's
Aftermath
The assassination of President Kennedy one month after the hearings took a lot of steam out of Robert Kennedy's war on the mafia. However, later, due in part to Valachi's disclosures, the United States Congress eventually passed two new laws to strengthen federal racketeering and gambling statutes to aid the Federal Bureau of Investigation's fight against mob influence. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 provided for the use of court-ordered electronic surveillance in the investigation of certain specified violations.
The
The Valachi Papers
In 1964 the US Department of Justice urged Valachi to write down his personal history of his underworld career. Although Valachi was only expected to fill in the gaps in his formal questioning, the resulting account of his thirty-year criminal career was a rambling 1,180-page manuscript titled The Real Thing.[13][14][15]
Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach authorized the public release of Valachi’s manuscript. He hoped that publication of Valachi’s story would aid law enforcement and possibly encourage other criminal informers to step forward. Author Peter Maas, who broke Valachi’s story in The Saturday Evening Post, was assigned the job of editing the manuscript and permitted to interview Valachi in his Washington, D.C., jail cell.[14][15]
The American Italian Anti-Defamation League promoted a national campaign against the book on the grounds that it would reinforce negative ethnic stereotypes. If the book’s publication was not stopped they would appeal directly to the White House. Katzenbach reversed his decision to publish the book after a meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, an action that embarrassed the Justice Department.[14][15]
In May 1966, Katzenbach asked a district court to stop Maas from publishing the book—the first time that a U.S. attorney general had ever tried to prevent publication of a book.[citation needed] Maas never published his edition of Valachi’s original memoirs, but he did publish a third-person account based upon interviews he himself had conducted with Valachi.[citation needed] These formed the basis of the book The Valachi Papers, which was published in 1968.[14][15] The book was made into the 1972 film The Valachi Papers starring Charles Bronson as Valachi.
Francis Ford Coppola, in his director's commentary on The Godfather Part II (1974), mentioned that the scenes depicting the Senate committee interrogation of Michael Corleone and Frank Pentangeli are based on Valachi's federal hearings and that Pentangeli is like a Valachi figure.[16]
Notes
- ^ a b Raab, Selwyn (2005). Five Families. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 135–136.
- ^ "Their Thing, Time, August 16, 1963". Archived from the original on 2009-05-14. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
- ^ a b Killers in Prison Archived 2012-07-09 at archive.today, Time, October 4, 1963
- ^ a b "The Smell of It" Archived 2012-07-09 at archive.today, Time, October 11, 1963
- ^ Maas, Peter (1968). Valachi Papers. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 27-35.
- ^ Maas, The Valachi Papers, p. 18
- ^ International Drug Trafficking: Law Enforcement Challenges for the Next Century by Thomas A. Constantine; Administrator, United States Drug Enforcement Administration
- ISBN 0-313-30653-2.
- ^ a b Their Thing, Time, 16 August 1963
- ^ Maas, The Valachi Papers, p. 32
- ISBN 978-1-137-49135-0.
- ^ "History of the FBI". Archived from the original on 2013-05-17. Retrieved 2013-11-14.
- ^ Books: His Life and Crimes, Time, January 17, 1969
- ^ a b c d The Valachi Papers, Censorship (accessed March 6, 2011)
- ^ a b c d Peter Maas, Encyclopedia of World Biography (accessed March 6, 2011)
- ASIN B00003CXAA.
References
- Maas, Peter. 1968. The Valachi Papers. New York, Putnam.
- Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
- Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
- Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0
- Dan E. Moldea, The Hoffa Wars, Charter Books, New York: 1978 (ISBN 0-441-34010-5).
- Charles Brandt, I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran and the inside story of the Mafia, the Teamsters, and the last ride of Jimmy Hoffa, Steerforth Press, Hanover (NH, USA) 2004 (ISBN 1-58642-077-1).
External links
- Mafia Hearings on Capital Hill on History.com