Old Mafia file going on NY auction block

On the bottom of each entry are the words: “Property of U.S. Govt _ for official use only. Not to be disseminated or contents disclosed without permission of Commissioner of Narcotics.”

Geiger said the cloth cover binder is not dated, except for two pages. One is from 1959, the other from 1962, indicating the files were most likely compiled before the McClellan hearings (there’s no mention of the testimony in the book) and after the police raid on the mob conference in upstate New York in 1957.

There was evidence that Robert Kennedy used a copy to select “who he was going to target in the McClellan Hearings; 1,500 people testified before that committee and the Mafia file was used as a source for the hearings,” Geiger said. “It started with the Bureau of Narcotics and then kicked upstairs to the attorney general’s office.”

Genovese crime family soldier Joseph Valachi testified for the government, famously coining the phrase La Cosa Nostra. It was the first time that the government and the public heard of the underworld as an integrated network of criminals with a hierarchical structure.

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