Statement of John E. Storer, California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, July 1964 (Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Part 3)

The chief of California's state narcotics bureau tells the Senate subcommittee that heroin and marihuana in California come from Mexico and that "It is not a Mafia, Cosa Nostra-type operation in California."

Date

1964-07-30

Kind

hearing

Source

National Criminal Justice Reference Service, scan of the printed hearings (NCJ 119303)

Retrieved

2026-10-12

Docket

Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 88th Cong., 1st and 2d sess., pursuant to S. Res. 278, 88th Cong., Part 3, printed pp. 741–747

Rights

A work of the United States Senate, printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States. 17 U.S.C. § 105. The NCJRS cover sheet records reproduction permission as "Public Domain / U.S. Senate."

John E. Storer appeared as Chief of the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement of the California Department of Justice. His written statement, printed with a letter from Attorney General Stanley Mosk, begins at page 741 of Part 3 (NCJRS PDF page 837), and his answers to questions run to page 747. He was a state witness, not a federal one, but his statement is part of the same Senate record.

The statement gives the state’s count of more than 17,000 names in its index of addict-users and says: “Heroin and marihuana in our State originate in Mexico. It is brought across the 140 mile-long border between California and Mexico.” It continues: “There is no sinister ‘Mr. Big’ controlling supply, demand, price, and quality from his mountain hideaway” (p. 742 of the scan’s text layer). Questioned by Senator Curtis, Storer said California had no “syndicate operation in the narcotic traffic,” that its peddlers “are private entrepreneurs,” and: “We do not have any ‘Mr. Big’ living on a mountain, and surrounded by a moat in California, operating this situation. It is not a Mafia, Cosa Nostra-type operation in California” (p. 746).

The testimony stands in the record beside the Bureau of Narcotics’ accounts of New York and France in the same hearings. The date given here follows the research record; the text layer was read for these pages and is imperfect.