Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime

William G. O'Brien

Named in Kefauver Committee staff exhibits as the head of Intra-State News, a Miami wire service, and among the wire-service witnesses the committee could not serve in 1950.

Aliases
Butsy O'Brien
Source
Kefauver Committee, Part 5, Exhibit 44 (December 1950), via Internet Archive
Rights
Biography on this page is limited to what the cited records state. Testimony and staff exhibits are labelled as such; they are not findings.

On the record

  • 1946-1947 — The committee staff's Exhibit 40 says the Miami news service run by Butsy O'Brien paid Trans-America during its competition with Continental and then shifted back to Continental through Howard Sports News of Baltimore (staff memorandum).
  • 1949 — Exhibit 40 says O'Brien "is the specific individual who gave the order for the wire service" shut-off in the S. & G. Syndicate situation in 1949 (staff memorandum).
  • 18 December 1950 — Exhibit 44 lists "William G. (Butsy) O'Brien" among wire-service witnesses the committee had been unable to serve, and says he was "ordered to cut off wire service to S. & G. Syndicate, according to Western Union" (staff exhibit).

Everything on this page comes from the committee staff’s exhibits; no role is set. A committee report of March 1951 on the contempt of a William G. O’Brien is filed separately. That page does not say whether he is the head of Intra-State News, and this page does not merge the two.

Records

itemKefauver Part 5, Exhibits 41, 41-A, 42 and 44: wire-service charts and the witnesses the committee could not serve (December 1950)Counsel offered a map of Continental's telegraph lines, charts of the Continental and Trans-America networks, and a list of wire-service witnesses the committee had been unable to serve, among them the head of a Miami wire service.itemKefauver Part 5, Exhibit 40: staff summary of evidence on Continental Press, with Annex A ownership dates (December 1950)A committee staff memorandum, printed at pp. 1386-1390 of the Part 5 appendix, on how Continental was formed after Annenberg left the wire business in 1939, its distributors, the 1946-47 contest with Trans-America, and a dated list of its changes of ownership.