#37: The State of the Mafia: A 1967 FBI Report (Part Two)

The Gangland History Podcast: An Organized Crime & Mafia History Podcast

In this episode, we continue the “State of the Mafia (1967)” series. If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to go back and watch ‘The State of the Mafia: Part One’ “The rules that hold us together” as it will be a very good primer for this episode’s content.

I’m calling this show ‘The State of the Mafia (1967): Part Two’ “Life or Death Obligations.” Like the first part of this series, this report will jump around a lot, but in the end I think you’ll still enjoy it, and hopefully it teaches you “a couple of three things.”

Okay, so let’s reset the stage here.

This 1967 FBI report, which we began to cover in Part One (again, go watch or listen to it first if you haven’t), is a veritable gold-mine of information. The aim at the time of creation was focused on providing an overall picture of LCN membership and activities throughout the United States as things stood in 1967. The report was declassified in 1996.

The originator of the report was a man named Robert G. O’Neil, and the report itself was submitted to the FBI Director at the time, one J. Edgar Hoover.

Sometimes in the course of historical research, you just find things that are simply too good not to share. In this case, I found this report by accident, got to reading it, and was very much enthralled by it. And based on the responses in the first episode (a 96% approval rating on YouTube), I think it’s worth continuing.

In Part One, I covered the following topics:

• The historical background of the Mafia and where it came from

• The ‘Commission,’ its members and purpose

• Organizational structure, terminology, qualifications and admission to membership

• Initiation rites and the differences between regions and families in ‘making’ ceremonies

In this episode, we’re going to continue along that track and get into:

• Membership obligations

• Advantages of La Cosa Nostra membership

• Security measures

• Transfers of Members

For the sake of time, we’ll stop this episode after transfers of members.

The report in its entirety will likely require four parts in total to fully cover, and will be linked in the description of the episode. Again, it contains references to 50+ cities and 196 informants in total. So, it’s a massive dossier and treasure trove of information on the Mafia.

Link to full report: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=113324#relPageId=21

There are many different families, individual mobsters, and stories referenced in this episode. The episode bounces from the "who's who" of the American Mafia, to several lesser known characters, citing informant reports that were geared on teaching the FBI about the Mafia back in the 1960's.

And now, I'm bringing this information to your doorstep.