The Everything Mafia Book by Scott M Dietche

from another trial. Capone was found guilty, fined $50,000, and sentenced to eleven years. The reign of Al Capone was over.

    Who were the Secret Six?
This crime-fighting team was so secretive, it’s not exactly known to this day who they were. The Six were a group of Chicago businessmen dedicated to ferreting out mob influence in the city. They funded investigations, lobbied influential politicians, and helped businesses deal with extortion attempts.
    Eliot Ness and the feds brought down Al Capone, but the Chicago Outfit (as the mob in the Windy City came to be known) continued on. Frank Nitti took over after Capone’s demise, but “offed” himself. Evidently it was too stressful being the big cheese. Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo, Tony Aiuppa, and Sam Giancana were a few of the successors to the legacy of Capone.
    Hoover and the Mafia
    Hoover became director of the FBI and remained there for almost fifty years. In that time he amassed detailed files on thousands of politicians, entertainers, and ordinary citizens. It is believed that the dirt he had on the revolving-door residents of the White House was sometimes used as blackmail, and was one of the ways he maintained job security. He was a larger-than-life figure whose image still echoes in the halls of every FBI field office across the country.
    Hoover worked for the Library of Congress and later the Justice Department. He tracked down illegal aliens on the home front during World War I. There was a fear that many Germans were potential spies and saboteurs. After the war it was a fear of the communists.
    The FBI Story
    Hoover was placed in charge of the newly formed General Intelligence Division of the Justice Department, and his career as a lawman had begun. It was here that Hoover began his lifetime obsession of amassing files on people. In these early days it was mostly files on suspected “radical” groups. A necessary endeavor, but over the decades Hoover fancied himself the final arbiter of what was considered radical and “anti-American.” The Hoover Files eventually included people like Bing Crosby and Rock Hudson, hardly rabid anarchists bent on toppling the government.
    Hoover rose within the ranks of the Justice Department, seeking out and destroying communists and other radicals both real and imagined. His eyes were on his prize, his personal Holy Grail—directorship of the Bureau of Investigation, later called the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He achieved that goal in 1924 and remained in the position until his death in 1972.
    Hoover dressed in white linen suits and had an avid interest in collectibles. He was never seen in the company of women and had a longtime male companion, fellow FBI agent Clyde Tolson. They worked together and lived together. Naturally, rumors about Hoover’s sexual tastes were dished for decades. One mobster claimed to have seen a photograph of Hoover in women’s clothing, dressed as a 1920s “flapper.” The photo has never surfaced.
    J. Edgar Hoover

    Courtesy of AP Images
    This photo shows FBI director J. Edgar Hoover speaking to the Senate Crime Investigating Committee, urging them to continue its exposure of organized crime in Washington, D.C., on March 26,1951.

    There have been many movies glorifying the Federal Bureau of Investigation. James Cagney starred in the 1935 movie G-Men, and James Stewart put on the badge in the 1959 movie The FBI Story. These were done in Hoover’s lifetime and with his approval, as was the long-running television show from the 1960s called The FBI. An updated version of that show, Today’s FBI, ran in the early 1980s.
    Melvin and Hoover
    Hoover was a man full of righteous indignation and by all accounts not blessed with a sense of humor or healthy self-deprecation. He was outraged by the romanticization of gangsters in the Roaring Twenties. He achieved national attention in the Depression-ravaged 1930s when a different breed of gangster terrorized America’s heartland. These