Bringing Down the Mob

Overview

New York Mafia boss John Gotti once remarked, “Don’t ever say anything you don’t want played back to you someday.” But Gotti didn’t heed his own advice. His voice is one in a vast chorus of mobsters captured on wiretaps and bugs. After the Kefauver hearings, Americans demanded a more aggressive campaign to bring down the Mob. Law enforcement agencies armed themselves with new techniques and technologies, and prosecutors deployed a new law that enabled them to decapitate the nation’s most powerful crime syndicates. By the end of the 20th century, the traditional Mob was a shadow of its former self.