Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime

Record

Hearing

1950-10-18

U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, printed hearings, Part 5: Illinois, via Internet Archive

Kefauver Part 5: testimony of Thomas F. Kelly, general manager of Continental Press (18 October 1950), pp. 691-699

Continental's general manager told the committee how he worked for James Ragen and Moses Annenberg's news bureaus, how in 1939 Annenberg "was going to give up the news business," and how Arthur McBride took the business over with most of Annenberg's staff.

Date
1950-10-18
Kind
hearing
Source
U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, printed hearings, Part 5: Illinois, via Internet Archive
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Rights
A hearing print of the United States Senate, published by the Government Printing Office. A work of the United States Congress, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The scan is the Internet Archive copy of the Boston Public Library's printed volume.

Thomas F. Kelly testified in Chicago on 18 October 1950 with Walter Gallagher and William Dempsey of Washington as counsel (Part 5, pp. 691-701; pp. 691-699 were read, with a short passage from his 19 December session at pp. 1101-1102). Asked for his address, he answered: “General manager, Continental Press, 821 West Fifty-third Street,” in Chicago.

He said James Ragen left the Hearst Chicago Examiner in 1927 and “went over to work for Mr. Annenberg on the news bureau,” the General News Bureau, which he believed was owned “by Annenberg, and Mr. Lynch or Mr. Tenis.” He described Annenberg’s Racing Record and Nationwide News, the merger of the two news bureaus under Ragen, and his own trips for Ragen to the bureau’s offices. Early in 1939, he said, Ragen told him that “Mr. M. L. Annenberg was going to give up the news business.”

Kelly said Arthur McBride, whose sister he had married, then took up the business with “practically all the personnel of Mr. Annenberg,” and that Chicago and Cleveland lawyers “suggested that the further Continental Press stayed away from bookmakers, the better off Continental Press would be.” In 1940, he said, McBride “announced that James Ragen, Jr., was the general manager of Continental Press.” Later in the session his counsel stated for the record that Arthur McBride sold his interest to Ragen, Jr. in 1942; that is counsel’s statement.

The account is the witness’s own, under oath. Kelly’s later sessions (pp. 710-718, 771-848 and 1095-1136) were not read for this page.

itemKefauver Committee hearings, Part 5: Illinois (1950–1951)Printed hearings of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Part 5, Illinois: testimony taken from September 1950 to January 1951, including Paul DeLucia, Louis Campagna, Anthony J. Accardo, and Joseph Aiuppa.itemKefauver Part 5: testimony of Edward J. McBride, owner of Continental Press (7 October 1950), pp. 437-447A 26-year-old law student testified "I own the Continental Press Service," that his uncle Tom Kelly ran it as general manager, and that he had bought it in stages from the Ragens.itemKefauver Part 5, Exhibit 40: staff summary of evidence on Continental Press, with Annex A ownership dates (December 1950)A committee staff memorandum, printed at pp. 1386-1390 of the Part 5 appendix, on how Continental was formed after Annenberg left the wire business in 1939, its distributors, the 1946-47 contest with Trans-America, and a dated list of its changes of ownership.itemS. Rept. 81-1752 on Continental Press, as quoted in Kefauver Part 2, pp. 9-10 (1950)FCC chairman Wayne Coy read pages 15 and 16 of the Senate Commerce Committee's report on S. 3358 into the Kefauver record: it calls Continental the successor to the Annenberg wire service and finds that it has "a near monopoly in the transmission of racing news."