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Valachi hearings

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TheValachi hearings,also known as theMcClellan hearings,investigatedorganized crimeactivities across the United States. The hearings were initiated byArkansasSenatorJohn L. McClellanin 1963. Named after the major government witness against theAmerican Mafia,foot soldier andmade manJoseph Valachi,the trial exposed American organized crime to the world through Valachi's televised testimony.[1]At the trial, Valachi was the first member of theItalian-American Mafiato acknowledge its existence publicly, and is credited with popularization of the termcosa nostra.[2]The trial also exposed the hierarchy of the American Mafia, including theFive FamiliesandThe Commission.

Overview[edit]

In October 1963, Valachi testified before SenatorJohn L. McClellan's congressional committee onorganized crime,thePermanent Subcommittee on Investigationsof theU.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations.He gave the American public a firsthand account of Mafia activities in the United States.[3][4]

Valachi had agreed to testify against the mafia and expose its dark past after landing in prison for a heroin charge alongside his Boss, DonVito Genovese.Fueled by anger at his former organization and a fear for his life after receiving thekiss of deathfrom Genovese, Valachi reached out to testify, knowing the only other likely option was death.[5]

A low-ranking member of the New York–basedGenovese crime family,Valachi was the first ever government witness to come forward from the American Mafia itself. Before Valachi, federal authorities had no concrete evidence that the American Mafia even existed. His disclosures did not lead directly to the prosecution of many high-rankingMafialeaders, but he was able to provide many details ofits history,structure, operations and rituals, as well as naming many active and former members of the major crime families.

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 ofLa Cosa Nostra,including itsrites of initiation.[6]These televised hearings brought home to average Americans the violence and intimidation routinely used by the Mafia to further and protect its criminal enterprises.[7]

Disclosures[edit]

Much of the knowledge accessible to the public today about the American Mafia was first disclosed in Joseph Valachi's televised testimony.[8]

The organizational structure of Cosa Nostra in accordance with Valachi's testimony.

Valachi disclosed that the Mafia was calledCosa Nostra( "our thing" or "this thing of ours" inItalian) among the members of the organization and that the term "Mafia" was an outsider term.[1][3][4][9]At the time, Cosa Nostra was understood as a proper name, fostered by theFBIand disseminated by the media. The designation gained wide popularity and almost replaced the term Mafia. (in Italy, the articlelaprecedes the general "mafia" term but is not used before "Cosa Nostra" ).The term was often prefixed with “La” (La Cosa Nostra), in the media and even in theFBI,but this is inconsistent with the Italian language as well as Valachi’s testimony.

He also revealed the organizational structure of the Mafia. Valachi revealed that "soldiers" are organized into "regimes" and led by a "caporegime"(" lieutenant "). The regimes, in turn, are organized into" families "and Boss ed by"capos"( Boss es), each representing a geographic area, who make up Cosa Nostra'sCommission,the final arbiter of the syndicate's affairs, and who act as a sort of Cosa Nostra Executive Board.[9][10]

While revealing the existence of these syndicates and that they were referred to as "families," he also disclosed the names of New York City'sFive Families.According to Valachi, the original Boss es of the Five Families wereCharles Luciano,Tommaso Gagliano,Joseph Profaci,Salvatore MaranzanoandVincent Mangano.At the time of his testimony in 1963, Valachi revealed that the current Boss es of the Five Families wereTommy Lucchese,Vito Genovese,Joseph Colombo,Carlo Gambino,andJoe Bonanno.These have since been the names most commonly used to refer to the New York Five Families, despite years of overturn and changing Boss es in each.[11]

Aftermath[edit]

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, theUnited States Congresseventually passed two new laws to strengthen federal racketeering and gambling statutes to aid theFederal Bureau of Investigation's fight against mob influence. TheOmnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968provided for the use of court-ordered electronic surveillance in the investigation of certain specified violations.

TheRacketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations(RICO) Statute of 1970 allowed organized groups to be prosecuted for all of their diverse criminal activities, without the crimes being linked by a perpetrator or all-encompassing conspiracy. Along with greater use of agents for undercover work by the late 1970s, these provisions helped the FBI develop cases that, in the 1980s, put almost all the major traditional crime family heads in prison.[12]

The Valachi Papers[edit]

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 titledThe Real Thing.[13][14][15]

Attorney GeneralNicholas Katzenbachauthorized 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. AuthorPeter Maas,who broke Valachi’s story inThe 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]

TheAmerican Italian Anti-Defamation Leaguepromoted 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 PresidentLyndon 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 bookThe Valachi Papers,which was published in 1968.[14][15]The book was made into the 1972 filmThe Valachi PapersstarringCharles Bronsonas Valachi.

Francis Ford Coppola,in his director's commentary onThe Godfather Part II(1974), mentioned that the scenes depicting the Senate committee interrogation ofMichael CorleoneandFrank Pentangeliare based on Valachi's federal hearings and that Pentangeli is like a Valachi figure.[16]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^abRaab, Selwyn (2005).Five Families.New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 135–136.
  2. ^"Their Thing, Time, August 16, 1963".Archived fromthe originalon 2009-05-14.Retrieved2019-02-27.
  3. ^abKillers in PrisonArchived2012-07-09 atarchive.today,Time, October 4, 1963
  4. ^ab"The Smell of It"Archived2012-07-09 atarchive.today,Time, October 11, 1963
  5. ^Maas, Peter (1968).Valachi Papers.New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. pp.27-35.
  6. ^Maas,The Valachi Papers,p. 18
  7. ^International Drug Trafficking: Law Enforcement Challenges for the Next Centuryby Thomas A. Constantine; Administrator, United StatesDrug Enforcement Administration
  8. ^Kelly, Robert (2000).Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States.Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp.309-310.ISBN0-313-30653-2.
  9. ^abTheir Thing,Time, 16 August 1963
  10. ^Maas, The Valachi Papers, p. 32
  11. ^Lupo, Salvatore (2015).The Two Mafias: a transatlantic history, 1888-2008.New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 123.ISBN978-1-137-49135-0.
  12. ^"History of the FBI".Archived fromthe originalon 2013-05-17.Retrieved2013-11-14.
  13. ^Books: His Life and Crimes,Time, January 17, 1969
  14. ^abcdThe Valachi Papers,Censorship (accessed March 6, 2011)
  15. ^abcdPeter Maas,Encyclopedia of World Biography (accessed March 6, 2011)
  16. ^"Director commentary".The Godfather Part II.1974.ASINB00003CXAA.

References[edit]

  • 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.ISBN0-313-30653-2
  • Sifakis, Carl.The Mafia Encyclopedia.New York: Da Capo Press, 2005.ISBN0-8160-5694-3
  • Sifakis, Carl.The Encyclopedia of American Crime.New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001.ISBN0-8160-4040-0
  • Dan E. Moldea,The Hoffa Wars,Charter Books, New York: 1978 (ISBN0-441-34010-5).
  • 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 (ISBN1-58642-077-1).

External links[edit]

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