# S. Hrg. 100-906: opening of the 1988 hearings on Joseph Valachi's 1963 testimony (11 April 1988)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/shrg-100-906-valachi-retrospective-1988-04-11/

Senator Sam Nunn opened "Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi" by recalling Valachi's 1963 testimony before the same subcommittee, with the 1963 charts hung in the hearing room. An FBI witness called Valachi the first member informant the Bureau developed.

The first day of the 1988 hearings, Monday, April 11, 1988, met in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building with Senator Sam Nunn presiding. Nunn's opening statement begins at printed page 1 (NCJRS PDF page 9): "Twenty-five years ago this September, Joseph Valachi, also known as Joe Cago, testified before this Subcommittee." He said Valachi's testimony gave "their first insider's view of a criminal organization that Valachi called La Cosa Nostra."

On printed page 2 Nunn told the room: "We have in our hearing room this morning the very charts with which Valachi identified the membership of the La Cosa Nostra family some 25 years ago." He credited the testimony with leading to the first organized crime strike force, more Justice Department attorneys, and the electronic surveillance, limited immunity and RICO statutes. On printed page 4 he said that some men who appeared "only as soldiers on the Valachi charts" now appeared "among the very highest ranking powers" on the subcommittee's new charts, and set out the rule the subcommittee used before naming anyone: two or more agencies or reliable sources had to identify the person independently.

The research record for this archive also notes FBI testimony the same day (printed pages 19 and 22 to 23), in which Executive Assistant Director Oliver Revell said: "Of course in 1963 the first member informant, Joe Valachi, that was developed by the Bureau testified before this very Subcommittee." Those pages were read in the NCJRS scan but are not among the excerpts stored with the research. Deputy Assistant Director Anthony Daniels compared the 1963 charts with the Bureau's 1987 charts; that comparison is the FBI's characterization, and no name from either set of charts is copied onto a family page here.

## Sources

- National Criminal Justice Reference Service, scan of the printed hearings (NCJ 125163): https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/125163NCJRS.pdf