Ganging Up on the Mob

During his campaign, Richard Nixon pledged to escalate drastically the federal war on organized crime. Last week he announced his battle plan. Though less electrifying than some might have wished and more eclectic than the Administration wishes to admit (it borrows heavily from Lyndon Johnson's proposals), it was a thoughtful and impressive start. Nixon asked Congress for $61 million for the task--or $25 million more than the Johnson Administration had requested. Part of the extra funds will be used to hire more FBI agents and federal prosecutors and start a special Labor Department investigation of mob influence in unions.

Even more useful than the money, perhaps, was the President's firm support of some relatively new methods of ganging up on the Mafia, which controls most of the nation's gambling, loan-sharking, and drug distribution. The organized criminal, said the President, "corrupts our governing institutions and subverts our democratic processes. For him, the moral and legal subversion of our society is a lifelong and lucrative profession." The Government's traditionally oblique line of attack used to be income tax violations, but big-time hoodlums have learned to keep their books in order. In the last few years, therefore, law-enforcement officials have been trying a variety of different approaches. Three--all endorsed by Nixon--seem particularly inventive and promising.

sb STRIKE FORCE: In the past, while a single Mafia family or group of families coordinated most of the major crime in an area, law officers would be working, often at cross-purposes, on different parts of the empire. Now the cops are learning to organize as effectively as the robbers. Three years ago, Henry Petersen, the Justice Department's chief racket buster, created "Strike Force," a team of lawyers and investigators from different Government law-enforcement branches. The first group of twelve men was sent early in 1967 into Buffalo, N.Y. to blitz the firmly entrenched Mafia operation of Stefano Magaddino. Stefano's son Peter, in whose home agents found more than $500,000 in cash as well as a clutch of weapons, has been prosecuted, among others, as a result of their efforts. Similar Strike Forces have now been set up in seven other cities, and so far, 320 indictments have been filed--and 60 convictions obtained--as a result of the teams' efforts. Nixon's organized-crime message proposed putting Strike Forces into a total of 20 cities.

sb THE IMMUNITY SQUEEZE: In recent years, some local and federal prosecutors have begun to grant immunity from prosecution to an increasing number of criminals--whether they want it or not--to make them break their oath of omerta and talk. Normally, any witness can refuse to talk on the grounds that his answer may incriminate him. But the Fifth Amendment only permits a man to remain silent if his words might be used against him in criminal court; there is no constitutional guarantee to absolute silence. Thus, if a man refuses to talk after a grand jury agrees to remove the threat of prosecution, he can be jailed for contempt of court.

The danger of the technique is that the witness may take what is known as an "immunity bath." Once a hoodlum is immunized, he may then confess to a dozen murders, but in all likelihood can never be prosecuted for any of them. Even so, more and more prosecutors are taking the chance, partly because it gives them a handle for some sort of action. Currently, only certain types of federal investigations can make use of the immunity tool. Nixon last week asked Congress to enact an immunity statute that would apply to probes into federal crimes of every kind.

sb ANTITRUST ACTIONS: Criminal law contains many sweeping guarantees to protect the accused. But in civil law, where usually only money is at stake, the guarantees are fewer. Attorney General John Mitchell and others are beginning to make use of the fact that where a criminal prosecution may be impossible, a civil suit is not. Mitchell is particularly anxious to apply antitrust theories against organized criminals. Two weeks ago, Senator John McClellan introduced legislation with that in mind. Since the idea received approval in the Nixon message, some version of it seems likely to pass.

One large advantage of civil proceedings is that a jury must only conclude that a defendant is more likely than not to have done what he is accused of; in criminal cases, a jury must be sure beyond a reasonable doubt. Still another advantage is that a verdict against a racketeer can result in an injunction against his illegal activity, a forced breaking up of his operation, or confiscation of all the property involved. Thus, if a Mafia family is found to control a city's jukebox industry in violation of antitrust laws, all the jukeboxes, warehouses and delivery trucks can be seized. This may well be a more effective way of stopping an enterprise than putting a few easily replaceable men in jail.

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