willing partnership of the very political and law-enforcement forces upon whom we rely to ferret out and destroy the syndicates.

The very phrase "ferret out" suggests one reason for our failure to mount a successful campaign against organized crime. Its day-to-day activities are not of the sensational headline variety. Most often they are brief encounters the placing of a bet, the delivery of a "fix"-in which both parties to the transaction or criminal act are interested in its successful completion. These are not the kinds of crime which are often reported.

Even when these isolated incidents come to light, our local police forces are not really equipped to deal with them. Our law enforcement structure is ill suited to the growth of new kinds of crimes-and organized crime is, in the history of law enforcement in this country, relatively new.

It is true that we have always had some form of organized crime, if we look upon the frontier gangs of the last century as in some sense comparable to La Cosa Nostra today. Nevertheless, the Crime Commission concluded that the "American System was not designed with organized crime in mind; and it has been notably unsuccessful to date in preventing such organizations from preying on society." The problem is further complicated, as I indicated before, by corruption of the local enforcement and political systems.

These considerations lead to the conclusion that, if we are to attain significant degrees of success, the battle against organized crime must depend heavily on federal participation and leadership. Crime, and especially organized crime, does not respect our traditional state and local political boundaries. It reaches from center-city to suburb to rural area, and across state lines. Our attack must be nationwide. It must be spurred by the lead of the Federal Government.

The Safe Streets Act of 1968 contained provisions for funds to improve local units for dealing with organized crime. Yet if the conclusions of the Crime Commission are accurate, it is unlikely that these funds will be sought by the areas which need them most or that, if sought, they will not ultimately be put to the use for which they are intended.

The federal participation I am speaking of is the active and sustained involvement of federal agencies, under the leadership of the Justice Department, in uncovering and prosecuting organized criminals. Federal involvement in the fight against organized crime of one form or another stretches back over half a century. But it has only been since the meeting of the Attorney General's Conference on Organized Crime in 1950, and the investigations of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce that we have been committed to a sustained federal effort. "The Kefauver Committee .. said that, while Federal agencies cannot be substituted for State and local enforcement in dealing with organized crime, the Federal Government must provide leadership and guidance, establish additional techniques for maximum coordination of law enforcement agencies, take a positive approach in using its power to fight organized crime, and seek legislation when its powers are insufficient." 3 In 1954 the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the Justice Department, a part of the Criminal Division, was organized to coordinate federal activities in this field. At the time of the famous Appalachin meeting three years later, the Organized Crime Section had a staff of ten attorneys.

As a result of the discovery of the Appalachin conference, the Attorney General appointed a Special Group on Organized Crime in April of 1958, which pursued the activities of individual attendants of the conference and conducted grand jury investigations. This Group was disbanded after trial, and many of its functions tranesferred to the Organized Crime Section. The Group also recommended that an Attorney General's Office on Syndicated Crime be established to spearhead the fight, and coordinate federal efforts. Many of its recommendations still remain to be implemented, and some are among the legislative proposals that are the subject of these hearings.

The next focus on organized crime came through the activities and investigations of your Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field, Mr. Chairman. Your investigation revealed the significant and greatly disturbing extent to which organized criminals had infiltrated legitimate business enterprise and labor unions.

However, by 1960 the Organized Crime Section still had only Seventeen (17) attorneys on its staff. It was not until the Attorney Generalship of Robert F.

House Committee on Government Operations, Federal Effort Against Organized Crime: Report of Agency Operations, H.R. Rept. No. 1574, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 12 (1968).

Kennedy that the federal effort took a new direction and began to develop the staff and resources which were needed then and which must be marshalled now if we are to cope with the menace of the syndicates.

By 1963 there were sixty (60) attorneys in the Organized Crime Section, and, as the statistics which you included in the Record last week indicated, investigative and prosecutorial activities of the section reached unprecedented heights.* Unfortunately the effort was too much reliant upon the personal drive and interest of the Attorney General, and as the statistics indicate, there was a decline in activity after his departure from the Justice Department.

Since 1966 and the presidential directives of that year, activity in the Organized Crime Section has again picked up. But it is tremendously important that we do not risk another decline in interest and activity-such relapses lose years in the drive, causing irreparable damage. We cannot any longer permit the extent of the federal activity against organized crime to depend upon the personal interest of individuals who must necessarily allocate their time and efforts in many directions—the Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division.

The Assistant Attorney General finds himself in a situation where he is forced to concentrate his efforts on either organized crime and racketeering or the general crime fighting activities of the Justice Department, the latter including administrative regulations, appeals, fraud, and more general crime. Yet, the two are simply too extensive for any single man to adequately handle. The Federal commitment to fight organized crime must be institutionalized so that it will survive the passage of individuals and changes of administrations.

It is for this purpose that I introduced S. 974, to elevate the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section to the status of a Division. The bill accomplishes this by creating an additional position of Assistant Attorney General and desig. nating him as the Assistant Attorney General for Organized Crime. It further adds a new section to title 28 of the United States Code defining his powers and responsibilities. Essentially these include the supervision of all investigations and prosecutions for organized criminal activities, and the supervision of the activities of the United States attorneys in the field of organized crime. The proposal also authorizes him to employ such additional professional personnel and specialists as he finds necessary to properly carry out his duties.

I note, Mr. Chairman, that both the creation of a division level operation in the Justice Department to manage and coordinate organized crime activities and a significant increase in staffing for those efforts are recommendations of the President's Commission on Crime."

There are a number of reasons why the Organized Crime Section should be elevated to a division.

It is divisional in responsibilities, as I have indicated above. It is supposed to coordinate the efforts of as many as twenty-five federal agencies in the over-all battle against organized crime and to collect and analyze all of the information they uncover; as the result of a presidential policy statement in 1966 and an Executive Order in 1968 (text appended) it is the focal point in the drive against organized crime. Yet those presidential orders were necessary because the Justice Department, perhaps because of the lack of statutory directive or authority, had not adequately taken the lead. S. 974 makes it clear where the authority and responsibilty should be. I do not believe that the Organized Crime Section can meet the responsibilities of leadership and coordination set out by the Report of House Committee on Government Operations last year without divisional status and a clear statutory mandate of authority and responsibility.

All responsibility for organized crime activities of the Justice Department itself should be allocated to the division. Traditionally, the divisions have been created on an analytical basis, based on the statutes that are administered. The fight against organized crime cuts across these analytical lines, and must be dealt with on a functional basis. For example, organized crime litigation often involves tax and civil litigation as well as criminal prosecutions. Today these activities are handled on the basis of the traditional division. As a result, no one takes an over

115 Cong. Rec. 2642 (daily ed. March 11, 1969).

President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: Organized Crime 22 (1967).

view of the entire scheme of activities with a view to doing what is best in terms of furthering the fight against organized crime.

A tax case may appear unlikely of success, and, in the view of the Internal Revenue Service and the Tax Division not worthy of pursitive terms of the revenue or tax principles involved. But it may concern a significant, high ranking member of La Cosa Nostra, and, from the aspect of potentially removing him from active service, be worth the expenditure involved and more. The decision whether the case should be pursued should not occur without the potential impact on organized crime having been carefully assessed.

I think it most important, Mr. Chairman, that we realize that organized crime is a unique and particularly devastating kind of crime. As part of a concerted, ongoing activity it has a significantly different impact on our society, our economy, our political way of life, and it calls for a different, more broad sighted approach on the part of our law enforcement agencies.

It has been suggested that elevation of the Organized Crime Section to division status, parallel with the Criminal Division, would lead to conflicts of jurisdiction and duplication of efforts. Where conflicts of jurisdiction might arise, they would serve the useful function of pointing up areas where crimes should be investigated and prosecuted as part of an ongoing concerted activity rather than individual incidents. I would expect that such conflicts could be amicably resolved, just as I would expect that lines of communication between the divisions could readily be established which would prevent duplication of effort.

Mr. Chairman, there are numerous functions of the Organized Crime Section which should each be managed by a section by itself. There should be an Electronic Surveillance Section to supervise operations under title III of the Safe Streets Act of 1968. This will be the more important if the Justice Department implements that title to the extent that we have been told it intends to. Another section should be created to coordinate with the state and local law enforcement units, and to conduct the training programs which the division is directed to conduct under my bill. Still another section should coordinate the collection and computerization in a central data system all of the information relating to organized crime that is collected by the numerous federal and state agencies which have some exposure to the field.

Another provision of S. 974 authorizes the Assistant Attorney General to supervise the acquisition, location and management of Federal facilities for the protective housing of persons testifying in investigations or prosecutions concerning organized crime. This parallels title six of S. 30.

I cannot emphasize too greatly the importance of this seemingly simple provision. The Crime Commission pointed out that "under present procedures too few witnesses have been produced to prove the link between criminal group members and the illicit activities they sponsor."

The victims of organized criminal activity usually do not testify either because the crime is consensual, as I suggested above, or because they fear for their lives.

I have had to face this problem directly during my years as a United States Attorney in Maryland. Victims did not testify then, they did not testify when my predecessor held office, and they do not testify today, for those reasons. The addict will not turn in his pusher, because be relies on that criminal for a “fix”. The victim of extortion, already forced by fear to pay, will not then risk his life.

Insiders are kept quiet by an ideology of silence, underwritten by a completely realistic fear that death comes to those who talk-often not mere death, but death by torture.

Photographs of some of those grisly crimes have been shown to loan shark victims to secure repayment of their debts. Can people such as these victims really be expected to step forward to testify?

Unimplicated witnesses have been, and are now, regularly bribed, threatened, or murdered. Scores of cases have been lost because key witnesses turned up in rivers in concrete boots. Victims have been crushed-James Bond like along with their automobiles by hydraulic machines in syndicate-owned junkyards.

It is true that significant cases have been made by law enforcement agents, and they have been based in large part on the testimony of brave witnesses. The Department of Justice has had the finest investigation resources in the Nation. As I have suggested earlier, the Organized Crime Section is understaffed,

overworked, and underpaid. But it is staffed by honest, competent, imaginative and dedicated men, as have been the FBI, IRS, and Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents assigned to organized crime.

But look at the record. Between 1961 and 1968, the number of federally secured convictions of organized criminals rose from 73 to 520. That was a real accomplishment, but it scarcely touched the principal families of La Cosa Nostra. La Cosa Nostra has 5,000 members. Between 1961 and 1968 indictments were obtained against 290; convictions, against 147. That is three (3) percent. Of the 147, the most significant portion were convicted of tax evasion. La Cosa Nostra members are learning that by declaring on their tax returns more and more under "miscellaneous income," they can avoid prosecution.

To effectively strike against organized crime, we must strike it at all levels. But it is intentionally structured to avoid conventional sources of evidence. For these reasons, Mr. Chairman, we must take steps to encourage the giving of evidence, to enable the compulsion of evidence, and to render it less difficult to secure convictions where we do obtain evidence.

Providing physical protection for witnesses willing to testify is one of the steps we can take.

Providing immunity, so that we may constitutionally compel testimony is another. This is the purpose of S. 975, which permits the Attorney General or an Assistant Attorney General designated by him for the purpose, to approve the granting of immunity from prosecution for federal offenses revealed in the testimony of a witness. This is similar to the provision made in title two of S. 30. However, where S. 30 provides that the evidence revealed may not be used in subsequent prosecutions, S. 975 provides that there shall be no prosecutions.

Mr. Chairman, you indicated in your recent speech on the floor that you have made this departure from the usual form of immunity provisions in the belief that recent Supreme Court decisions have left the decision in Counselmen v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547 (1892), without substantial foundation. Counselmen declared an earlier statute which prohibited only use of the evidence, and not prosecution for the act, unconstitutional. I will not argue the constitutional point, but merely suggest that my bill is free of constitutional doubts.

I have serious doubts that the difference in result to be obtained under the two measures will be great. The burden of showing at a subsequent trial that the evidence employed has been arrived at from independent sources-that it is not "fruit of the poisonous tree"-will be tremendously difficult to carry in most cases. And I would expect any witness who found himself compelled to testify to reveal adequate information to insure this kind of protection against subsequent prosecution. I think that prosecutors have found under existing rules an exclusion of evidence illegally gained and the doctrine of excluding the fruit of the poisonous tree that second prosecutions are most often futile. I can't really foresee a better result in the present circumstances.

The final bill that I introduced which is under consideration in these hearings, S. 976, find a counterpart in S. 30's title eight. This is the provision which gives a judge authority to commit persons who have been convicted of a crime which he finds to have been part of an ongoing scheme of organized criminal activity, to terms of up to thirty years of imprisonment.

This measure was recommended by the President's Crime Commission, and a Special Committee of the American Bar Association. As drafted it is based on the efforts of the American Law Institute, included as part of the Model Penal Code and the Advisory Council of Judges of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in the Model Sentencing Act.

These provisions were carefully drafted to meet potential constitutional objections, and I believe they will pass a constitutional muster. The circumstances under which the law can be brought to play are narrowly defined. It applies only to felony convictions, where the court finds that: the defendant is 21 years of age or older, the felony was committed as part of a continuing criminal activity in concert with one or more persons, and that because of the dangerousness of the defendant such period of confined correctional treatment or custody is required for the protection of the public.

The defendant is given the protection of a full hearing on the question of whether the provisions should be invoked, where he will be represented by counsel, and has a right to introduce evidence to resist application of the section to him.

Mr. Chairman, I want to take this opportunity to commend you again for your efforts in this area. You have devoted much time to it in the past, and made significant contributions to our knowledge about the workings of organized crime and the ways in which we must go about fighting it. I hope that, as a result of these hearings, you will soon be reporting out a comprehensive bill that will include the provisions I have discussed today. As I have noted, the provisions of S. 30 and S. 975 and S. 976 do not materially differ. However, I would strongly urge that you incorporate the provisions of S. 974 into the measure which you ultimately report to the full committee.

Senator TYDINGS. Mr. Chairman, as you know, perhaps better than most, the concern in the Congress with organized crime is not new. Because of the dimensions of the problem it will require a massive effort to overcome and there are no easy or readily apparent solutions. Also as you know better than most the public interest waxes and wanes depending on the sensationalism of the headlines from time to time. Senator MCCLELLAN. Under conditions today which should they be doing waxing or waning?

Senator TYDINGS. They should be waxing, Mr. Chairman, and that is the purpose, the thrust of my comments, to make more certain the effort against organized crime is a continuing one and not one depending upon the vicissitudes of public opinion.

I think it is tremendously important that we take the necessary steps to reactivate and to institutionalize, so to speak, the Federal effort to combat organized crime.

In this area, perhaps more than any other area of criminal activity a sustained, long-term, continuing effort is necessary. You are dealing with a virtual hydra, with almost unlimited resources and powers of regeneration when you are talking about the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, the organized criminal elements in this country. A few convictions of numbers racketeers or dope peddlers is really a drop in the bucket. I think it is going to take the efforts of many people in public and in private life over the course of many years to really effectively combat the forces of organized crime in this country.

When you just look at the annual profits involved, which run literally into the billions of dollars, you can see that a few raids here and there or a few convictions of minor professional dope peddlers or number solicitors doesn't really make the difference and won't make the difference.

Unfortunately the effects of the organized criminal activities are felt at every level of society, and yet sometimes they are so subtle that we don't even recognize them.

For instance, take the narcotics addict. He has it brought directly home to him in the fact of his addiction and the source of his continuing supply, although he may not realize the complex superstructure which actually supports and supplies the local pusher. The harassed borrower gets into the hands of the loan shark, where the usurious interest rates are enforced by savage and sometimes deadly enforcers. How often does the ordinary citizen recognize the additional pennies that he pays to support increased costs of law enforcement or perhaps even more shocking the extra cents he pays for given products because of the syndicates' infiltration of a legitimate business or of its infiltration of leadership of an individual local of a labor union.

The situation is more unfortunate because it is so often the very, very poor in our ghettos or center cities who are the most directly and