Valachi hearings

[3][4] Valachi had agreed to testify against the mafia and expose its dark past after landing in prison for a heroin charge alongside his boss, Don Vito Genovese.

His disclosures did not lead directly to the prosecution of many high-ranking Mafia leaders, but he was able to provide many details of its history, structure, operations and rituals, as well as naming many active and former members of the major crime families.

According to Valachi, the original bosses of the Five Families were Charles Luciano, Tommaso Gagliano, Joseph Profaci, Salvatore Maranzano and Vincent Mangano.

At the time of his testimony in 1963, Valachi revealed that the current bosses of the Five Families were Tommy Lucchese, Vito Genovese, Joseph Colombo, Carlo Gambino, and Joe Bonanno.

Along with greater use of agents for undercover work by the late 1970s, these provisions helped the FBI develop cases that, in the 1980s, put almost all the major traditional crime family heads in prison.

Although Valachi was only expected to fill in the gaps in his formal questioning, the resulting account of his thirty-year criminal career was a rambling 1,180-page manuscript titled The Real Thing.

He hoped that publication of Valachi's story would aid law enforcement and possibly encourage other criminal informers to step forward.

[14][15] The American Italian Anti-Defamation League promoted a national campaign against the book on the grounds that it would reinforce negative ethnic stereotypes.

[14][15] In May 1966, Katzenbach asked a district court to stop Maas from publishing the book—the first time that a U.S. attorney general had ever tried to prevent publication of a book.