The Godfatter, Part 2
"Malignant Narcissism builds an Enterprise" History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI famously denied the existence of organized crime, and the Kefauver hearings of 1950–51, though dramatic, produced no actual convictions. In 1957, Senator John L. McClellan of Arkansas chaired Senate hearings on organized crime and labor racketeering, and a young Robert F. Kennedy served as chief counsel (a young Barry Goldwater was a committee staffer). Eventually, RICO (the racketeering statute) and WITSEC (witness protection) were enacted in the same piece of legislation — the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. The Johnson Presidential Commission on Crime in America laid the legislative table. The acronym RICO was taken by LBJ from a mobster character in the 1930 film Little Caesar in order to draw from the reliable well of racism in Congress and gain passage. Attorney General RFK made an aggressive push for the laws, but LBJ couldn’t get it done, and it was Richar...
