There is a story that J. Edgar Hoover denied the existence of the Mafia. There is a counter-claim that he did not “deny” it, but downplayed it because he saw organized crime as a local matter. The truth of the matter is a whole different conversation, but there is one thing that seems clear: the FBI did not have the tools to attack the Mafia even if they wanted to.
Murder? A state crime. Counterfeiting? A Secret Service crime. Bootlegging? A Treasury crime. Tax fraud? IRS. Narcotics? BNDD (later FBN, later DEA). What could the FBI actually do?
Interstate car theft, kidnapping, bank robbery and interstate prostitution. These are probably the core crimes the FBI could investigate. And mobsters are generally not bank robbers or kidnappers (though there are exceptions). So Hoover had no real reason to concern himself and his men.
Around 1957, with the Apalachin meeting, the FBI was “embarrassed” and suddenly had to enter the mob-hunting business. They started the Top Hoodlum Program in each regional office to compile data fast. But under what crime? Even the Apalachin event ended up being a prosecutorial dud – the men charged with conspiracy later had these charges tossed because they were conspiring to do… what? No one knew.
The men (and it was strictly men) investigated as “top hoodlums” had files opened on them under the Hobbs Act, apparently the closest thing the FBI could find. What is it?
The Hobbs Act was enacted in 1946 and prohibits actual or attempted robbery or extortion that affect interstate or foreign commerce. It also forbids conspiracy to do so. The statute, despite being conceived and enacted as an anti-racketeering measure in disputes between labor and management, is frequently used in connection with cases involving public corruption, commercial disputes, and corruption directed at members of labor unions.
Federal law protects “interstate commerce” because of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution. Those who see the federal government as too big or overreaching often point to this clause (or the interpretation of it) as a catch-all that allows the government to grow. It’s certainly interpreted very broadly in the Hobbs Act – if you threaten a business that operates in multiple states, you may be violating this law! If the business sells in only one state, but imports raw material from another state, this still applies. In other words, almost every business is an interstate business!
Let’s say investigating the Mafia under the Hobbs Act makes sense. Surely, extorting businesses and labor unions is part of what they do. But in practice, these opened files become more or less just a place to gather and store information. As of October 2023, I have identified 257 subjects of Hobbs Act investigations in Milwaukee, almost 100% Italian men. There have been at least 1,718 Hobbs Act investigations in Milwaukee, so it’s possible the majority are not Italian men. Regardless, of the 257 known subjects, I am not aware of ANY of them actually arrested or charged with Hobbs Act violations. That means 257 people had files, sometimes 100s of pages long, that were created for no prosecutorial reason.
When federal gambling laws were passed in 1961, this gave the FBI a powerful tool. Many arrests DID come out of this. But it does not appear the Hobbs Act “dumping ground” files were stopped. They continued to be opened at least through the 1970s.
The most powerful tool showed up in 1970 – RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Someone was a “racketeer” is they committed two or more crimes within ten years that supported an “enterprise.” The law was somewhat broad and many doubted you could successfully use it with facing Constitutional hurdles, but after a few test cases in the 1970s, it held up. The 1980s were a golden era for RICO. As long as the prosecutor could prove a “Mafia family” existed as an enterprise, it wasn’t hard to show its members had committed crimes on its behalf.