"The Lid Off Los Angeles" was a 1939 six-part series of newsmagazine articles that ran in Liberty, an American general interest magazine.

The series, written by Dwight F. McKinney and Fred Allhoff, asserted that the Los Angeles Police Department, in cooperation with officials in municipal government, had partnered with organized crime figures in the city for mutual financial benefit but to the detriment of the body politic.

The article alleged police protection of gambling, alcohol smuggling, and bordello prostitution in exchange for payoffs by crime bosses, as well bribery, intimidation, spying, dirty tricks, ratfucking, and ultimately violence on the part of the corrupt LAPD to protect gambling-prostitute-bootlegging revenue for crime bosses over a 20-year period, ending under the administrations of Chief of Police James E. Davis and Los Angeles mayor Frank L. Shaw.

The title of the series comes from a statement made by Clinton in the wake of the car bomb that almost killed private investigator Harry J. Raymond; he announced he had information about the involvement of elected officials that would "blow the lid off of Los Angeles".

In addition to "The Lid Off Los Angeles" one of his articles was adapted into an Edward G. Robinson film, and his serial Lightning in the Night is considered an important piece of speculative fiction in the hypothetical Axis victory in World War II subgenre.

According to the Los Angeles Evening Express, the expedition found four paintings that were supposedly buried around 1700 by missionaries, and "in an entirely separate cache of a dozen ancient coins of the time of Carolus IV and Philip V of Spain were discovered.

[26] The Los Angeles Times previewed the series on the front page of section two, commending the magazine for amply setting the stage with the historical background for the then-recent events like the Kynette trial, and commented, "Unlike Look and Collier's, which were satisfied with a once-over-lightly treatment of the sadder aspects of our citizenry, Liberty is digging in for a long winter of flamboyant and grating adjectives to describe our sin...the tempo of their piece is set early in the article, to-wit: 'To those who look shudderingly upon the terroristic activities of the secret police of Germany and Russia and ask whether such things can happen here, the answer is yes'.

"[27] The articles were described by a business school professor in 1940 as "a fairly reliable account of corruption and the civic crusade which resulted in the recall of the mayor".

[29] The articles made an "enormous impact,"[30] and the title has been continuously reused in reference to crime and problems generally in Los Angeles.