The Interim and Final Reports Of The Senate Rackets Committee (1957-1960)
A gift from Walter Sheridan, a top investigator for RFK Sr.
From 1957 to 1960, the greatest anti-Mafia investigation in American history was conducted by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field—also known as “The McClellan Committee” or “The Senate Rackets Committee,” aka "The Great Investigation."
Chairman John L. McClellan (D-Arkansas) and the members of his Senate committee aggressively pursued organized-crime figures, corrupt business executives, and labor racketeers. Those members included Frank Church (D-Idaho), Sam Ervin (D-North Carolina), John F. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), and Pat McNamara (D-Michigan), along with, at various times, Homer Capehart (R-Indiana), Carl Curtis (R-Nebraska), Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), Irving Ives (R-New York), and Karl Mundt (R-South Dakota),
The chief counsel of the committee was Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of Senator Kennedy. Other legendary members of the Senate staff included: Jerome Adlerman, Carmine Bellino, John Cye Cheasty, John Constandy, LaVern Duffy, Jim Kelly, Kenneth O’Donnell, Pierre Salinger, and Walter J. Sheridan, among many others.
During the Senate hearings, many of the verbal battles between the relentless Bob Kennedy and a murderers row of mobsters and their corrupt stooges, particularly Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, were breathtaking in scope. Specifically, the ferocious confrontations between Kennedy and Hoffa played out on the public stage and have since been elevated to mythical proportions.
Notably, I have published major books about the murders of both men: The Hoffa Wars in 1978 and The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy in 1995. And I have been approached by the namesakes of the victims to discuss these crimes—Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. (numerous conversations between October 29, 1975, and December 27, 1977) and Robert Kennedy, Jr. (two conversations on December 27, 2017, and April 2, 2018).
I began investigating Hoffa, the Teamsters, and the Mafia in December 1974. And I have been investigating Hoffa’s murder since the announcement of his disappearance on July 30, 1975.
In my book about the tragic killing of Senator Robert Kennedy on June 5-6, 1968, I concluded that his convicted assassin, Sirhan Sirhan—whom I interviewed three times for a total of fourteen hours—did it and did it alone, contrary to the bizarre beliefs of RFK Jr. who now inexplicably insists the Sirhan is an innocent man, wrongly accused.
When I moved to Washington, D.C., in December 1976, the great Walter Sheridan—my adopted mentor, whom RFK Jr. described to me as “like a brother” to his father—invited me to his home in nearby Derwood, Maryland, for dinner.
Before I left that night, Walter gave me two of the greatest gifts I have ever received.
The first was the contact information for his fellow investigators on the staff of The Senate Rackets Committee, along with that of his colleagues at the Department of Justice after John Kennedy, who became U.S. President in January 1961, selected his brother, Robert Kennedy, as U.S. Attorney General.
Walter was designated as the head of the “Get Hoffa Squad.”
When speaking of Robert Kennedy—whom I view as the greatest crimefighter in American history—I am fond of saying that while chief counsel of The Senate Rackets Committee, he ate mobsters for breakfast. . . . And then, when he became Attorney General, he started eating them for lunch and dinner, too.
The second gift Walter gave me was his extra set of the hearings of The Senate Rackets Committee—over fifty volumes—along with its interim and final reports. Walter presented them to me in two large boxes which I handled like precious gems.
Later, I gave the hearing books as a gift to my colleague James Neff, the author of the 2015 book, Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa. However, I kept the interim and final reports, as well as the committee’s index to those reports. I had plans for them.
Below are links to the committee’s complete set of reports and their index.
I am sure that Walter—who passed away on January 13, 1995—would approve that I arranged to have these historical documents scanned and then placed online in the public interest.
Interim Report: March 24, 1958: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-1st-Interim-Rpt.pdf
Second Interim Report (Part 1): August 5, 1959: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-2nd-Interim-Rpt-1.pdf
Second Interim Report (Part 2): October 23, 1959: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-2nd-Interim-Rpt-2.pdf
Final Report (Part 1), February 26, 1960: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-Final-Rpt-1.pdf
Final Report (Part 2), March 15, 1960: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-Final-Rpt-2.pdf
Final Report (Part 3), March 28, 1960: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-Final-Rpt-3.pdf
Final Report (Part 4), March 31, 1960: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-Final-Rpt-4.pdf
Final Report (Index), June 1960: https://www.moldea.com/DEM-SRC-Index.pdf
Thank you!