Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
Illustration: a dossier collage of maps, photographs and redacted case files. Not an archive object.

The Kefauver Committee, 1950–1951

The Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, 1950 to 1951: its printed hearings by city, its contempt reports, its Final Report, records at the National Archives, and photographs.

Illustration, not an archive object

The Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce was created by Senate Resolution 202 of the 81st Congress, and the Senate Historical Office dates the resolution to May 2, 1950. Estes Kefauver chaired it in 1950 and 1951 and Herbert O’Conor chaired it in 1951; its members were Lester Hunt, Herbert O’Conor, Charles Tobey and Alexander Wiley. It ceased to exist on September 1, 1951, and its files passed to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce.

This page gathers the records of the committee filed here: twenty-one printed hearing volumes and an index to the first twelve, forty-five contempt reports on forty-four witnesses, the Final Report, files and documents held at the National Archives, and the few photographs that qualify. A hearing volume is a record of questions and answers, not of findings; a contempt report is the committee’s request to the Senate, not a judgment; and a name in a witness list says only that the person was called. Each record’s page states what the source says and leaves the rest out.

Dates come from the printed hearings where they differ from the Senate’s later summary. The hearings themselves are on the Internet Archive as scans of the Government Printing Office print.

The hearings by city

Miami and Tampa

Kansas City and St. Louis

  • Part 4: Missouri: sessions in Washington and Kansas City, July to September 1950.
  • Part 4A: Missouri: sessions in Washington, St. Louis, and Kansas City, June 1950 to February 1951.

Chicago

  • Part 5: Illinois: testimony from September 1950 to January 1951, including Paul DeLucia, Louis Campagna, Anthony J. Accardo and Joseph Aiuppa.

Cleveland and Kentucky

New York and New Jersey

New Orleans

  • Part 8: Louisiana: sessions in New Orleans and Washington, January to February 1951.

Detroit

Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco

Philadelphia and Pennsylvania

Washington, D.C.

Narcotics

Index

The reports

The first, second and third interim reports were not found in a full-view government copy and are not filed.

Contempt

The committee asked the Senate to certify to the United States Attorney the contempt of witnesses who refused to answer or to produce records, or who did not appear. Forty-five reports cover forty-four witnesses; Joseph Doto, also named Joe Adonis, has two. The reports are listed by the date each was ordered printed. They state what the committee asked and what the hearing record shows; none states how the proceeding ended.

Ordered printed January 22, 1951

Ordered printed February 8, 1951

Ordered printed February 21, 1951

Ordered printed March 30, 1951

Ordered printed June 25, 1951

Ordered printed July 24, 1951

Ordered printed September 18, 1951

Records at the National Archives

Two documents from the Truman Library and seven file units from the committee’s own records in Record Group 46. The file units are catalog entries only: none is digitized, and this archive has not seen what is in them.

Photographs

No photograph of the hearings has been found that can be filed, apart from one staff photograph of Frank Costello testifying in 1951. The portraits of Senators Tobey, Wiley and O’Conor were made in 1938 and 1939, before the committee existed; the photograph of Senator Kefauver was made in 1952, after it ended. Each is labelled with its date on its page.

Exhibits

Charts, maps and photographs printed in the hearing volumes, each filed as its own record with an image of the printed page. The names, ranks and relationships on a chart are the labels of whoever made it, the committee staff, a police department or the Crime Commission of Greater Miami; they are not findings, and none is copied to a family page or a person page. Part 1 (Florida): Exhibit 108, “Gambling, Broward County”; Exhibit 109, “Wire Service” map; Exhibit 110, “Hotel Operation”; Exhibit 121, S. & G. city license; Exhibit 124, S. & G. license application card. Part 1-A (Florida, Tampa): Exhibit 2, “Organized Gambling in Tampa”; Exhibit 3, “Enforcement of Gambling Laws”; Exhibit 4, “Interstate Links of Mafia Crime with Tampa”. Part 2 (federal agencies): Exhibit 13, “Percentage of Repeaters”; Exhibit 15, prisoners 1939-1948. Part 4 (Missouri): Exhibit 9, Kansas City chart; Exhibit 10, “The Mafia”; Exhibit 11, raw opium chart. Part 5 (Illinois): Exhibit 23, Chicago Police Department organization chart; Exhibit 41-A, Continental Press and distributors; Exhibit 42, Trans-American wire, March 1947; Exhibit 43, wire service chronology; Exhibit 62, Chicago policy wheel; Exhibit 63, Dallas police photograph; Exhibit 68, Capone syndicate and S. & G.; Exhibit 69, S. & G. checks. Part 6 (Ohio-Kentucky): Exhibit 37, Continental Press wire chart; Exhibit 54, Jungle Inn buildings; Exhibit 55, Jungle Inn gambling room; Exhibit 56, gun turret interior; Exhibit 58, Jungle Inn interior with gun turret; Exhibit 61, Youngstown police chart. Part 18 (New York and New Jersey): Exhibit B, Atlantic City photographs.

The committee’s race-wire testimony and exhibits, from Mont Tennes and the General News Bureau to Continental Press, are gathered with the wire-company opinions on the Gambling and the wire page.