Killing the Mob
The Fight Against Organized Crime in America
byBill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
Book Edition Details
Summary
Under the glittering veneer of American prosperity lurks a shadowy empire of crime, a sinister underworld meticulously chronicled by O'Reilly and Dugard in their gripping exposé. From the audacious heists of Depression-era bandits like Dillinger and Bonnie & Clyde to the calculated machinations of Mafia kingpins, "Killing the Mob" unravels the tangled web of 20th-century organized crime. This tale of power and betrayal illuminates the clandestine influence of mobsters on American history, from the Mafia Commission's deadly power plays to the high-stakes battles for Cuba, Vegas, and Hollywood. Amidst this chaos, the fierce rivalry between Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and Teamster titan Jimmy Hoffa takes center stage, revealing a nation teetering on the edge of lawlessness. Prepare to be enthralled by a true crime saga that reads like the most captivating thriller, bringing to life an era where the line between criminals and kingmakers was perilously thin.
Introduction
In the dark corners of American history, where shadows dance with ambition and violence mingles with vast wealth, lies one of the most fascinating yet terrifying chapters of the twentieth century. The story of organized crime in America is not merely a tale of gangsters and gun battles—it is the chronicle of an alternative government that once wielded power rivaling that of elected officials, controlling entire industries and corrupting the very foundations of law and order. This narrative unfolds across decades of transformation, from the desperate years of the Great Depression when bank robbers became folk heroes, through the sophisticated criminal empires that emerged during World War II, to the relentless federal campaigns that ultimately dismantled these shadowy kingdoms. It reveals how figures like Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, and Sam Giancana built criminal enterprises that generated billions in revenue while remaining largely invisible to the American public. Perhaps most remarkably, it exposes the intricate web of relationships between the underworld and the highest echelons of political power, including connections that reached into the Kennedy White House itself. For anyone seeking to understand how America's criminal landscape evolved, how federal law enforcement adapted to unprecedented challenges, or how organized crime continues to influence modern society, this exploration offers essential insights into a world where loyalty was purchased with blood, silence was enforced through terror, and the American dream was pursued through decidedly un-American means.
The Great Depression Gangsters: Public Enemies and Federal Response (1930s)
The 1930s marked a pivotal moment in American crime history, as the Great Depression created a perfect storm of desperation, popular resentment, and criminal opportunity. With unemployment reaching twenty-one percent and banks foreclosing on desperate families daily, a new breed of criminal emerged—the celebrity gangster who captured public imagination while terrorizing law enforcement across state lines. John Dillinger epitomized this phenomenon, transforming from a small-time Indianapolis hoodlum into America's most notorious bank robber. His sophisticated operations, complete with detailed getaway maps and high-powered vehicles, represented a quantum leap in criminal organization. When Dillinger made his daring escape from Indiana's Crown Point jail using nothing but a wooden gun carved from soap, he didn't just embarrass local authorities—he triggered a federal response that would forever change American law enforcement. His violation of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act by crossing state lines handed jurisdiction to J. Edgar Hoover's Division of Investigation, marking the first time federal agents would hunt a bank robber with such intensity. The era's criminal gallery read like a Who's Who of American folklore: Bonnie and Clyde, whose bullet-riddled romance ended on a Louisiana back road; Pretty Boy Floyd, the "Sagebrush Robin Hood" who tore up mortgages during bank robberies; and Baby Face Nelson, whose psychopathic violence made him feared even among fellow criminals. These figures became folk heroes to a public that saw banks as predatory institutions more interested in profit than helping struggling families survive. Yet beneath their Robin Hood image lay a darker truth—these were cold-blooded killers who murdered law enforcement officers and innocent bystanders with equal ruthlessness. The federal response proved both swift and deadly. Congress passed the Crime Control Acts of 1934, finally granting federal agents the authority to carry weapons and make arrests. Hoover assembled teams of sharpshooters, including Texas Rangers and Oklahoma detectives who had no qualms about shooting first. The results were spectacular and brutal: Dillinger gunned down outside Chicago's Biograph Theater, Pretty Boy Floyd riddled with bullets in an Ohio field, Baby Face Nelson dying in a gun battle that claimed two federal agents. By the decade's end, the era of the celebrity bank robber was over, but it had fundamentally transformed federal law enforcement, establishing the FBI as America's premier crime-fighting force and creating the template for modern federal investigations.
World War II and the Mafia's Rise to Power (1940s-1950s)
As America plunged into World War II, an unexpected alliance emerged from the shadows—one that would reshape organized crime for decades. The war years witnessed the Mafia's transformation from regional gangs into a sophisticated national syndicate, facilitated paradoxically by their cooperation with the very government that had been pursuing them. The catalyst came with the mysterious burning of the luxury liner Normandie in New York Harbor in 1942. Whether accident or sabotage, the incident exposed the federal government's vulnerability on the waterfront, where Italian-American longshoremen controlled every aspect of maritime commerce. Naval Intelligence, desperate to prevent further sabotage and ensure the flow of war materials, made a devil's bargain with Lucky Luciano, the imprisoned Mafia boss who controlled New York's docks through an intricate network of union officials, bartenders, and dock workers. Operation Underworld, as it came to be known, granted Luciano early release from prison in exchange for his cooperation in maintaining dock security and providing intelligence for the Allied invasion of Sicily. The Sicilian connection proved crucial as Allied forces prepared for Operation Husky. Luciano's criminal contacts provided invaluable intelligence about German defensive positions, safe landing sites, and local collaborators willing to assist the invasion. The Mafia, having been brutally suppressed by Mussolini's fascist regime, eagerly embraced the Allied cause, seeing liberation as an opportunity to reclaim their traditional power base. This wartime cooperation established precedents and relationships that would prove enormously beneficial to organized crime in the post-war era. The war's end found the Mafia stronger and more sophisticated than ever before. The December 1946 Havana Conference, orchestrated by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, brought together crime bosses from across America to establish the Commission—a governing body that would regulate territorial disputes, approve major operations, and coordinate the expansion into new criminal enterprises. Here, amid the luxury of Cuba's Hotel Nacional, the modern American Mafia was born. The conference's decisions would shape decades of criminal activity: the expansion into narcotics trafficking despite Luciano's objections, the development of Las Vegas as a criminal playground, and the establishment of Cuba as a money-laundering paradise. The war had transformed scattered ethnic gangs into a national criminal syndicate with the organizational sophistication to challenge legitimate government institutions.
Kennedy's War on Organized Crime and Political Corruption (1960s)
The 1960s dawned with an explosive revelation that would forever alter the relationship between organized crime and federal law enforcement. On November 14, 1957, New York State Police Sergeant Edgar Croswell's investigation of suspicious activity at Joseph Barbara's estate in Apalachin resulted in the most significant breakthrough in Mafia history—the arrest of sixty top crime bosses gathered for what appeared to be a national criminal convention. The Apalachin incident shattered J. Edgar Hoover's long-held position that organized crime was merely a collection of unrelated local gangs. Faced with undeniable evidence of a national criminal syndicate, Hoover was forced to acknowledge what investigators like Harry Anslinger of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics had been arguing for years—that the American Mafia was real, highly organized, and operating on a scale that dwarfed previous criminal enterprises. The revelation would catapult a young Senate counsel named Robert F. Kennedy into the national spotlight as he prepared to take on the most powerful criminal organization in American history. Bobby Kennedy's crusade began with the McClellan Committee hearings, where his relentless interrogation of figures like Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa and Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana exposed the intricate connections between organized labor and organized crime. Kennedy's prosecutorial style—aggressive, personal, and uncompromising—turned these televised hearings into national spectacles that educated millions of Americans about the scope of Mafia influence. His pursuit of Hoffa became particularly intense, developing into a personal vendetta that would define both men's careers. The union leader's defiant responses and calculated humiliation of Kennedy only fueled the attorney general's determination to destroy him. As Attorney General under his brother President John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy launched the most comprehensive assault on organized crime in American history. His Justice Department secured 687 organized crime indictments with a ninety percent conviction rate, deported powerful bosses like New Orleans don Carlos Marcello, and systematically dismantled criminal operations that had operated with impunity for decades. The creation of specialized strike forces, the use of electronic surveillance, and unprecedented coordination between federal agencies transformed law enforcement's approach to organized crime. Yet Kennedy's war came at a terrible personal cost—the Mafia's hatred of the Kennedy brothers ran so deep that many suspected organized crime involvement when both President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy fell to assassins' bullets. The decade's most significant breakthrough came from an unexpected source: Joseph Valachi, a low-level soldier in the Genovese family who became the first Mafia member to break the code of silence and testify publicly about the organization's inner workings. His 1963 Senate testimony provided unprecedented insights into Mafia structure, rituals, and operations, finally giving law enforcement the intelligence needed to understand and combat their adversary. Valachi's revelations about the Commission, the five families of New York, and the national reach of organized crime validated everything Kennedy had been arguing—that the Mafia represented a shadow government with its own laws, territories, and methods of enforcement.
The Decline of La Cosa Nostra and Modern Law Enforcement (1970s-1980s)
The assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 marked a watershed moment for organized crime in America, effectively ending the most intensive federal assault the Mafia had ever faced. With Bobby Kennedy's departure from the Justice Department and J. Edgar Hoover's redirection of FBI resources toward anti-Communist activities, the criminal syndicate found itself with unprecedented freedom to expand and consolidate power throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. This period witnessed both the Mafia's greatest influence and the seeds of its ultimate decline. Crime families controlled vast swaths of American industry—construction, trucking, garbage collection, entertainment, and labor unions—generating billions in revenue while maintaining their traditional code of silence. Yet this success bred complacency and internal conflict. The bloody Bonanno family wars of the late 1960s demonstrated how greed and ambition could fracture even the most established criminal organizations. The old rules were breaking down, and a new generation of mobsters proved less disciplined and more willing to attract attention through spectacular violence. The 1970s brought unprecedented challenges to organized crime's traditional secrecy. The Church Committee hearings revealed the CIA's alliance with Mafia figures like Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli in plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, exposing the complex relationship between intelligence agencies and criminal organizations. Both Giancana and Roselli paid with their lives for their cooperation with federal investigators, murdered in brutal fashion that sent clear messages about the consequences of breaking omertà. The decade also saw the mysterious disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, whose planned testimony before the Church Committee died with him in 1975. The final blow to traditional organized crime came through the unprecedented success of FBI Special Agent Joseph Pistone, who spent six years undercover as "Donnie Brasco," penetrating the Bonanno family and gathering intelligence that would fuel hundreds of prosecutions. Pistone's operation, combined with new legal weapons like the RICO Act, allowed federal prosecutors to finally hold crime bosses accountable for the actions of their subordinates. The Mafia Commission trial of the 1980s effectively decapitated New York's five families, sending their leadership to prison for life sentences. By decade's end, the American Mafia—while still dangerous—had been transformed from an alternative government into just another criminal organization, stripped of its mystique and much of its power. The age of organized crime's dominance over American society had finally come to an end, though its influence on politics, entertainment, and labor would echo for generations to come.
Summary
The rise and fall of organized crime in America reveals the eternal struggle between order and chaos, between legitimate authority and criminal enterprise that has defined much of the twentieth century. At its core, this story illustrates how criminal organizations thrive in the gaps left by ineffective government—exploiting Prohibition's unenforceable laws, capitalizing on the Depression's economic desperation, and filling the vacuum created by fragmented local law enforcement that couldn't cross jurisdictional boundaries. The Mafia's greatest strength proved to be its greatest weakness: the very secrecy and insularity that protected it from law enforcement also made it vulnerable to infiltration and betrayal. When the federal government finally marshaled the political will, legal tools, and investigative techniques necessary to penetrate these criminal organizations, the results were devastating and irreversible. The transformation of scattered federal agencies into coordinated strike forces, the development of electronic surveillance capabilities, and the creation of witness protection programs fundamentally shifted the balance of power between criminals and law enforcement. Today's lessons remain profoundly relevant as new forms of organized crime—cyber criminal networks, international drug cartels, and terror organizations—challenge traditional law enforcement approaches. The historical pattern suggests that criminal organizations will continue to evolve and adapt, exploiting new technologies and social vulnerabilities. Yet the principles that ultimately defeated the traditional Mafia—persistent investigation, inter-agency cooperation, and the courage of individuals willing to break codes of silence—remain the essential tools for combating organized criminal enterprise. Perhaps most importantly, this history demonstrates that the rule of law, however imperfect, must be vigilantly defended against those who would replace it with their own violent alternatives.
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