McClellan Part 32: Chicago in the testimony of Martin F. Pera (1 July 1958) and the chairman's closing statement (3 July 1958)

In the McClellan Committee’s hearings on the Apalachin meeting (Part 32), U.S. Bureau of Narcotics agent Martin F. Pera was asked by Robert Kennedy on 1 July 1958 about Chicago (pp. 12244-12245). He answered: “Certainly the important figures in Chicago would be Tony Accardo and Paul Ricca.” He said the element represented by Accardo “has a very tight control of the illicit activities and many of the legitimate fronts operated there by him.” Asked why no one directly from Chicago was among those stopped at Apalachin, he suggested that a man from Springfield, Illinois, whose name the OCR does not render reliably, might have represented Accardo’s interests there because of the publicity around Accardo.

Los Angeles police Capt. James E. Hamilton’s testimony of the next day, which mentions an earlier Accardo visit to Los Angeles with “Monny Giancanna” (p. 12333), is on its own page. In his closing statement of 3 July 1958 (p. 12488) the chairman announced that hearings the following week would examine the Chicago restaurant industry and call, among others, “Anthony J. Accardo, who has long been reputed as one of the racket overlords of Chicago.”

Pera’s answers are a federal agent’s characterizations, and the chairman’s words describe reputation. Neither is a finding. Quotations follow the Internet Archive’s OCR of the printed volume.