Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
First page of a confidential typed Bureau of Prohibition memorandum from Seattle.
Open the full imageJPG, 1235 × 1600 px, 0.3 MB

Bureau of Prohibition memorandum recording a minister's allegations about Seattle (9 January 1931)

National Archives confidential Bureau of Prohibition memorandum from a Seattle special agent recording a minister's allegations of graft and protected bootlegging, gambling and prostitution. The memorandum says the minister had no concrete evidence against the officers he named.

Date
1931-01-09
Kind
case-file
Source
National Archives Catalog
Retrieved
2026-10-11
NAID
298494
Rights
The National Archives catalog lists this item's Use Restriction status as "Unrestricted." Federal records are public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105.

The National Archives catalog titles this a memorandum regarding a conversation with a minister about conditions in Seattle. It is a confidential memorandum by a Bureau of Prohibition special agent recording the minister’s allegations of graft and of protected bootlegging, gambling and prostitution, including a claimed system of collections from law violators. The memorandum itself says the minister had no concrete evidence against the officers he named. It reports allegations only, and the officials named in it are omitted here.

Caution on the file unit: NARA files this under “Seattle Conspiracy (Olmstead) Investigation” (naId 298488), and its scope note describes the case as a police-graft case that included a police captain whose conviction went to the Supreme Court on wiretapping. The Supreme Court’s opinion in Olmstead v. United States, filed here, concerns a liquor-importing conspiracy and does not describe the defendant as a police captain. This page does not repeat the scope note’s description. The item is in Record Group 56 (Treasury), National Archives at Seattle, and is part of NARA’s “Spirited Republic” exhibit (exhibit number 27636). The full-resolution image is 7.4 MB; the stored copy was resized.

itemOlmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)The Supreme Court holds, 4 June 1928, that federal prohibition officers' wiretapping of telephone lines without entering the defendants' premises was not a search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment, so the intercepted conversations were admissible.itemPrologue article, "Spirited Republic: Alcohol's Evolving Role in U.S. History" (Winter 2014)Prologue article by National Archives senior curator Bruce Bustard introducing the exhibition "Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History", and pointing to National Archives records on Prohibition.