United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce

The televised hearing helped Kefauver become a household name; he subsequently launched an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1952, and became the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1956.

[3] In particular, many cities and states were concerned with the way organized crime had infiltrated interstate commerce, and how it threatened to hold the American economy hostage through labor racketeering.

They included: Kefauver; Herbert O'Conor (Maryland), Lester C. Hunt (Wyoming), Alexander Wiley (Wisconsin), and Charles W. Tobey (New Hampshire).

[4][6] Many of the committee's hearings were televised live on national television to large audiences, providing many Americans with their first glimpse of organized crime's influence in the U.S.[1][5][7] Among the more notorious figures who appeared before the committee were Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo, Louis "Little New York" Campagna, Mickey Cohen, Willie Moretti, Frank Costello, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, Meyer Lansky, Paul "The Waiter" Ricca,[6][8] Virginia Hill (former Joe Adonis–Chicago Outfit messenger and mobster Bugsy Siegel's girlfriend), and four of Irish mob boss Enoch "Nucky" Johnson's former policemen in Atlantic City were also called forth.

[3] The television broadcast of the committee's hearings attracted huge public interest and educated a broad audience about the issues of municipal corruption and organized crime.

An estimated 30 million people in the United States tuned in to watch the live proceedings in March 1951 and at the time 72 percent of the population were familiar with the committee's work.

[12] The tremendous success of the broadcast led to the production of a cycle of "exposé" crime films dealing with the dismantling of complex criminal organizations by law enforcement.