The Valachi Papers (2 page)

Then, on January 9, almost two weeks after the Associated Press story, the Italian-American newspaper
II Progresso
printed a violent editorial denouncing the impending publication of
^a
The Valachi Memoirs." This editorial was the first shot in a massive campaign to halt the book, and it set the pattern for all that followed. The editorial wondered out loud if the whole point of publication was to perpetuate the "kind of image of criminality associated with the many Italian names in Valachi's testimony" and then in the same breath noted, quite accurately, that it was an "image which millions of law-abiding Americans of Italian descent have consistently proven false through their outstanding achievements in the arts, in the sciences, in industry, in labor, in the professions, in government and in the religious orders."

The editorial, with an appropriate covering letter, was sent to every U.S. Senator and Congressman. "Professional" Italian-Americans around the country used it to keep the ball rolling. It was the same sort of outburst that greeted a widely acclaimed book,
The Italians,
by Luigi Barzini, himself a member of the Italian Parliament, because it did not present an idealized portrait of his countrymen, or the cries raised against Yale University for publishing a scholarly work which did not credit Christopher Columbus with discovering America. In Valachi's case the theme remained constant: his book would slur all Italian-Americans. P. Vincent Landi, representing the Order of the Sons of Italy in

America, declared that it was a "matter of civil rights" for Italian-Americans to have the proper image. Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael A. Musmanno added a new argument. Valachi, he said, would become a "millionaire** from the book, neglecting to explain how Valachi, doomed to life imprisonment and limited to $15 a month spending money, was going to enjoy all this imagined wealth.

There is no question that many of these fears were legitimately motivated; on the other hand, some protests were less than wholly disinterested. Among the loudest voices to be raised against publication of the manuscript belonged to those who subsequently formed the American-Italian Anti-Defamation Council, whose executive board turned out to be riddled with relatives and associates of Cosa Nostra mobsters. One board member, Daniel J. Motto, the head of a bakers union local, was recently convicted for playing a key role in a Cosa Nostra attempt to infiltrate the New York City government. It was Valachi, by now aware of these protests, who delivered the classic riposte. "What are they yelling about?" he asked me.
"I'm
not writing about Italians.
I'm
writing about mob guys."

Friends of mine in the Justice Department told me not to worry—that protests like this occurred every time it prosecuted a criminal who happened to have an Italian name. I first learned how serious the situation might be one Saturday afternoon in January while I was working with Valachi in the D.C. Jail. I received a telephone call from Rosenthal asking me to come to his office as soon as possible. When I got there, he said, "We've got problems," and showed me a batch of correspondence from various Senators and Congressmen to Attorney General Katzenbach, all of it referring to
Il
Progresso's
editorial. Some of it was intemperate; some was not. One letter, for example, from the highly respected Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, simply requested background guidance in answering mail triggered by the editorial.

Rosenthal asked my help in drafting a reply to these letters. I did so. I emphasized the fact that the Valachi manuscript was a unique social document about a particular period of U.S. history; that, as would be made abundantly clear, it was not an ethnic story, but rather the experiences of one man; and that, as Gus Tyler, a leading social historian, has aptly pointed out in his introduction to one of the standard scholarly works in the field,
Organized Crime in America:
organized crime is not the "child of the Italians, or Irish, or Jews, or the Puerto Ricans—although it has drawn recruits from all these, and other, ethnic groups. Organized crime is a product and reflection of our national culture."

Rosenthal was confident that this reply would help work "things" out. By then, however, it was too late, and on February 1, 1966, a delegation of twelve Italian-Americans met in Washington with Katzenbach, Hundley, and Fred M. Vinson, Jr., Assistant Attorney in charge of the Criminal Division. In the group were four Congressmen, Peter W. Rodino, Jr., Joseph G. Minish, and Dominick V. Daniels, all from New Jersey, and Frank Annunzio of Illinois. Delegation members demanded that publication of the manuscript be stopped and threatened to take up the matter with the White House.

The late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who, of course, previously had been Attorney General, offered me little encouragement when I discussed the situation with him. "They are going to go to Johnson," he said. "It's an easy way for him to get them on the hook. He'll tell Nick to kill the book, and Nick isn't going to argue with him."

While nobody in a position to do so is saying what transpired between President Johnson and Attorney General Katzenbach, I did learn that the protests were handled at the White House by Jack Valenti, a special assistant to the President. Shortly thereafter, the Justice Department reversed its entire stand on the Valachi book, although the key department people under Katzenbach who were involved in the affair were against any change. Vinson, until it became a matter of administration policy, was on record opposing it. Hundley, who had brought the department's drive against organized crime to an unparalleled degree of efficiency, told me that it was one of the reasons that led ultimately to his resignation. John Douglas, who, as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division, would have to direct any court action to enjoin publication of the manuscript, sought vainly to find a compromise solution. Douglas, a man of recognized integrity, reflected the general embarrassment of the department when I tried to broach the subject with him considerably after the event. "Peter," he said, "I'm not even going to talk to you about this off the record."

Thus, on February 8, I received a telephone call from Jack Rosenthal. "I'm afraid," he said, "that the deal is going to be queered."

"What's happening?" I asked.

"We're just getting it from all over."

I told Rosenthal that it was inconceivable to me that the Justice Department, of all government departments, would knuckle under to such blatant political pressure.

"Well," he said, "it's not final or official, but things look terrible right now. I don't have much hope."

Once the decision to suppress the book had been made, I received an offer to reimburse me for the time and expenses I had put into the project. No dollar-and-cents figure was mentioned because I refused to discuss any financial settlement.

The late Senator Robert Kennedy, who was a friend of mine, then told me that Katzenbach, also a friend of his, had come to his office and asked him if he would "speak" to me. Kennedy declined to intervene, because he found it reprehensible that the Justice Department had gone back on its word, once it had authorized publication of the manuscript.

Convinced more than ever that this was a story that demanded telling, I retained attorneys to represent me. (Paul McArdle, whom the department had arranged to represent Valachi, found himself involved in much more than he had bargained for and would, with everyone's blessing, withdraw. As he said, he had not counted on "fighting the White House.")

On May 10, 1966, the Department of Justice asked the U.S. District Court in Washington to enjoin me from "disseminating or publishing" the manuscript, and a press release announcing this decision was hand-delivered to the four Congressmen who had been in the February 1 protest delegation.

It was the first time an Attorney General of the United States had initiated action to ban a book.

All at once, publication of a manuscript which the Justice Department had hailed as being of such benefit to law enforcement was suddenly "injurious" to this same law enforcement. If there ever was any doubt about the political pressure behind these moves, New York City Surrogate Court Judge S. Samuel DiFalco quickly dispelled it. DiFalco, as national chairman of the Italian-American League to Combat Defamation, dispatched a telegram to various Italian-American groups around the country which read: HAPPY TO INFORM YOU THAT AS A RESULT OF OUR PROTEST THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCED WITHDRAWAL OF PERMISSION FOR PUBLICATION OF VALACHI MEMOIRS.

I received, however, many letters expressing a different view. One was from Samuel J. Prete, chairman of the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce in Detroit, who noted:

"The very fact of the refusal of the Justice Department to permit the publication of Valachi's book is an indictment upon all Italian-Americans because it is an inference that all Italians are bad. I, as a good Italian-American, resent this."

On the West Coast the Italian-American newspaper
Corriere del Popolo
adopted the attitude considerably different from that of //
Progresso.
"No one can hope to achieve through censorship anything meaningful," it pointed out. "The honest Italian-Americans have nothing to fear from revelations of Valachi. They have a social, ethical and moral standing in the United States that Valachi can never upset."

The general press, perhaps predictably, was almost unanimously sympathetic to the battle to free the book. As
Newsweek
wryly commented about the Justice Department's action, "It was hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys."

But now I had created the opportunity to express my views in open forum—in the court proceedings—for one way or another, despite the prospect of an extensive legal fight, I had resolved to publish Valachi's story. I lost the first round—contesting a preliminary injunction against publication obtained by the Justice Department—when the U.S. District Court in Washington ruled that the department would suffer "immethate and irreparable harm" if the injunction were not granted. The Court of Appeals upheld the preliminary injunction, emphasizing that it was "settled law" not to upset such an injunction by a lower court except in an instance of "clear error," and suggested that the case be brought to trial.

This was to be my next step, which would force the full story out into the open. I decided to go straight to the heart of the matter—the Memo of Understanding, which had been prepared by the Justice Department and which clearly indicated that it not only had proposed the publication of a book based on Valachi's manuscript, but had specifically emphasized the expectation that such publication would advance the ends of law enforcement.

To get on the record the facts behind this complete and abrupt reversal of policy, subpoenas were served for the purpose of obtaining pretrial depositions from Katzenbach, who by now had become Undersecretary of State, and other officials who had a pertinent connection with the case. The reaction was sharp and immethate. The Justice Department went to court to fight the taking of these depositions. During arguments, Judge Alexander Holtzoff suddenly addressed himself to the department attorneys:

It is one thing to have the right of editing or revising, but another thing to say to a person you can't publish at all. Isn't that rather shabby treatment? Well, perhaps I won't embarrass you by requesting an answer to that.

Here they allowed him [Peter Maas] to work on this manuscript. It may be it was improvident in the first instance. Then they say you can't publish it, we don't think you should publish it at all.

In return the Justice Department claimed in effect that I had not been treated all that unfairly, that I "had the opportunity to interview [Valachi] and to examine his life of crime as denoted by the manuscript," and that, while enjoined from publishing Valachi's manuscript, I was free to use all this material to publish a third-person book. This paved the way for
The Valachi Papers.

The Valachi Papers
is composed of my direct interviews with him, his written responses to many of my questions, interviews with people associated with Valachi, the several hundred pages of raw interrogation by the Bureau of Narcotics and the FBI to which I had access, and other official sources and documents.

Other than agents from the Bureau of Narcotics and the FBI, I am the only one who has interviewed Valachi. All during the protracted negotiations with the Justice Department, I continued to see him. My interviews often paralleled material he had written and discussed in public testimony and developed as well lines of questioning in areas he had left obscure. In many instances, simply to check the accuracy of his memory, I had him repeat his recollections on even such minor points as an experience in a Catholic reformatory, a police chase, an incident at a racetrack. He was like a tape recorder; it always came out the same.

In only one respect have I taken any liberties with what he had to say. Valachi's normal speaking vocabulary is rife with "nut-tin'," "hadda," "gonna," and so on. In the interests of readability, these contractions were eliminated.

In all other respects it is the story they tried to suppress.

At approximately 7:30 A.M.
on June 22, 1962, at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, prisoner number 82811, a convicted trafficker in heroin named Joseph Michael Valachi, seized a two-foot length of iron pipe lying on the ground near some construction work and, before anyone realized what he was up to, rushed at a fellow inmate from behind and in a matter of seconds beat him to a bloody, dying pulp.

Initially, however brutal the assault, it appeared to be nothing more than the kind of routine murder that periodically erupts under the stress of life inside prison walls. Certainly there was little to indicate anything exceptional about Valachi himself, at the time fifty-eight years old, a squat, swarthy, powerfully built man, 5 feet 6 inches tall, overweight at 184 pounds, with a thick crop of politician-gray hair, expressionless brown eyes and a guttural rasp of a voice, who, despite a career earnestly devoted to crime, was just about as obscure a hoodlum as one could hope to find.