Kefauver hearings
The Kefauver Hearings denote a process to fight crime (especially organized crime ) in the years 1950/1951 in the United States . The investigations were named after the Democratic politician Estes Kefauver , who chaired the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce .
However, Kefauver carried out further hearings (" hearings ") afterwards ; (see e.g. 1954 Comics Code ) and later activities of the Senate Special Committee - after the death of Kefauver in 1963 - are referred to as investigations of the "Kefauver Committee".
Organized crime 1950/1951
process
The aim of the committee, which was formed from US senators , was to gather information about organized crime and to come up with suggestions for combating it. Committee members traveled across the country in search of corruption and the amalgamation of politics and gangsterism . The investigation caused quite a stir in the United States, compounded by the fact that this was the first Senate investigation to be televised on US television.
The committee focused its investigation exclusively on the Italian-American mafia in the United States and not on other syndicates, which it was later accused of. However, associates of the Italian-Americans such as Meyer Lansky and Moe Sedway were also invited to the committee, who as non-Italians could never become full members of the American Cosa Nostra and had their own structures, which is why they are now an independent ethnic criminal group ( Kosher Nostra ).
On December 13, 1950, Willie Moretti admitted the existence of the Mafia in the USA in his questioning. However, it was not only suspects summoned to testify before the committee; in his testimony in 1951 , police superintendent George F. Richardson described Harry Rosen and his deputy William "Willie" Weisberg as leading mobsters in illegal gambling.
Other professional criminals had not been summoned to the hearings either, but were also named; so the criminal dominance of Nicholas Civella , the boss of the Civella family ( Kansas City Crime Family ) did not go unnoticed and he was referred to as a criminal subject.
The hearings were conducted quite tough and the lawyers brought with them by the summoned people had a difficult time.
“If I were Council and this dirty rat came in, I would say: 'You're entiteled to representation but you can't get it from me. I will have no fellowship with you. Get out of my office and find your representaion somewhere else. '”
“If I were a counselor and that filthy rat came in I'd say, 'You're entitled to [legal] representation, but you can't get it from me. I don't want to be in touch with you. Leave my office and find your representative somewhere else. '"
At the end of April 1951, Kefauver submitted his final report.
consequences
As a result of the committee's proposals, new laws were passed to facilitate the fight against the National Crime Syndicate .
One of the successes of the Kefauver Hearings, however, was that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI recognized the existence of organized crime and could no longer deny it. On November 27, 1957, Hoover announced the "Top Hoodlum Program".
The mobster Mickey Cohen was arrested after his summons in 1950 for tax evasion for four years; he became an international celebrity after his imprisonment, as he was the subject of numerous newspaper articles; he stepped z. B. on the television show by journalist Mike Wallace .
Willie Moretti , underboss of the Genovese family , was shot dead by three killers of Albert Anastasia on October 4, 1951 in a restaurant in Cliffside Park, New Jersey , because his behavior was viewed as a breach of Omertà and further statements should not be made.
Other committees made similar efforts to clear the matter. By the deputies of the Democrats - 1975, which dealt Frank Church led - "Special Committee of the US Senate intelligence services (United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) for the investigation of government action related to activities" in particular with the Linking Politics and Crime. When Sam Giancana received a summons before this body, also known as the Church Committee , the former boss of the Chicago Outfit was murdered before he could meet his summons .
When the Maxi-Trials against the original Sicilian Cosa Nostra were organized by the Italian judiciary in the 1980s, this was done along the lines of the Kefauver committee and its hearings.
Comics Code 1954
In 1954 hearings were held before the "Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency" , which should investigate the negative effects of violence and sex in the media, especially in comics , which is why these hearings were also known as the " Comics Code ".
Above all, horror comics, so-called crime comics and the depiction of sex were objects of investigation. Kefauver interviewed employees of comic publishers, including the publisher Bill Gaines , who was very successful with comics such as "Tales from the Crypt". Kefauver confronted the publisher with the title page of “Crime SuspenStories 22” , which shows the detail of a man who holds a bloody ax in one hand and a severed woman's head in the other.
In addition, z. B. the pin-up Bettie Page and Irving Klaw summoned and asked to explain their photographs .
consequences
The broadcast generated another wave of protest, which led to comic book dealers taking various comics out of their programs. Comics were publicly burned in several cities and calls for state censorship were raised.
The destruction of dozens of Bettie Page's negatives was ordered by court order. Reprinting the remaining negatives was made a criminal offense.
Irving Klaw had to end his mail order business in BDSM and bondage photography .
Adaptations
Senator Charles W. Tobey's personal verbal attack on lawyer Moses Polakoff was re- enacted in the 1999 US film Meyer Lansky - American Roulette .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The American Mafia: Kefauver Committee Interim Report ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair: Whiteout: the CIA, drugs, and the press , Verso December 2, 1999, ISBN 1-85984-258-5 , p. 90.
- ↑ Internet Movie Database: Bettie Page
- ^ Bart Beaty: Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture . University Press of Mississippi, 2005, ISBN 1-57806-819-3
- ^ Ami Kiste Nyberg: Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code . University Press of Mississippi, 1998, ISBN 0-87805-975-X .
