Statement by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, September 25, 1963
The Justice Department's 24-page typescript of Kennedy's prepared statement for the opening day of the 1963 hearings, held by the National Archives with the Attorney General's speeches.
- Date
- 1963-09-25
- Kind
- case-file
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- NAID
- 179029658
- Rights
- A record of the United States Department of Justice. Public domain in the United States, 17 U.S.C. § 105. The National Archives catalog marks access and use "Unrestricted."
This is the Justice Department’s typescript of the prepared statement that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy read to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on September 25, 1963. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 60, in the series Attorneys General Addresses, 1963 (NAID 178985591). The digital object is a 24-page PDF. The same file is served on justice.gov.
The first page is headed “Notice: There should be no premature release of this statement” and “Statement by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.” The text matches the statement printed at page 5 and following of Part 1 of the hearings. It says that the disclosures of Joseph Valachi are significant because “for the first time an insider … a knowledgeable member of the racketeering hierarchy” had broken the code of silence. It says: “We know that Cosa Nostra is run by a Commission and that the leaders of Cosa Nostra in most major cities are responsible to the Commission.”
It is the Attorney General’s statement of what the Department believed in 1963, not a court finding. No page image is stored here. The PDF is linked above. It is the Attorney General’s statement of what the Department believed in 1963, not a court finding. The image stored here is the first page of the PDF.
