Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime

Record

Hearing

1964-07-30

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

Narcotics hearings, Part 4, printed page 913: Bureau witness Ward on who controlled heroin in New York

Mr. Ward of the Bureau of Narcotics told the subcommittee on 30 July 1964 that about 95 percent of the heroin in the New York area was controlled by five organizations, and that the balance was in the hands of Jewish racketeers, Black traffickers with contacts among seamen, or Puerto Ricans.

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., pursuant to S. Res. 278, 88th Cong., Part 4
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."

Printed page 913 of Part 4 (NCJRS PDF page 1027), from the afternoon session of 30 July 1964. The witness is Mr. Ward of the Bureau of Narcotics; his first name is not printed on this page.

Speaking of the New York area, he said: “In that area, I would say 95 percent of the narcotics are controlled by these five mobs. The balance of the traffic is controlled by Jewish racketeers or by Negroes who might have contacts with the independent seamen, or Puerto Ricans who fall in the same category. Once in a while, they make a connection with a seaman and they bring some narcotics into the country.” He added that he was speaking of heroin. Of the past he said that in the 1920s “The Jewish racketeers of New York almost exclusively controlled narcotics,” that “the leader at that time was Arnold Rothstein,” and that after Rothstein was murdered “the advent of the Italian racketeers taking over began.” He said “The bulk of the heroin is assimilated right in New York City and its environs,” and that New York was “a supply source for Chicago and Boston.”

This is a law-enforcement witness’s estimate, not a measured figure. The ethnic categories are his. The page is filed with the Harlem section as the Bureau’s 1964 description of the traffic outside the five families, a share it put at about five percent.

itemOrganized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, Part 4 (July 30, 1964)The fourth printed volume: the afternoon session of July 30, 1964, with Bureau of Narcotics testimony on heroin routes and fold-out route and case charts.itemNarcotics hearings, Part 4, printed page 915: Ward on traffickers travelling between New York, Washington and BaltimoreAsked about Washington, the Bureau of Narcotics witness Ward said that Baltimore and Washington depended on New York, and that the major traffickers there, whom he described as Black, travelled to New York for heroin or were supplied by New York traffickers who travelled to them.itemNarcotics hearings, Part 4, printed page 918: the Bureau of Narcotics history of the New York trafficA Bureau of Narcotics exhibit says that most of the New York heroin traffic outside the Italian syndicates was handled by Jewish racketeers and several Puerto Rican, Cuban and Black traffickers with their own foreign sources, and restates Valachi's naming of five New York organizations.