During 1963, Senator McClellan sponsored a series of hearings which clearly demonstrated that the American mafia was alive and well, had a defined structure and code of behavior. Joe Valachi, a low-level member of the mafia, testified about the details of his life in organized crime and presented a first-hand view of La Cosa Nostra. These televised hearings educated average Americans about the violence and intimidations used by the mafia to attain their goals.

The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Justice, established in 1967, arrived at a definition of organized crime as a "society that seeks to operate outside the control of the American people and their Government. It involves thousands of criminals working within structures as large as those of any corporation." Despite the fact that this definition was written over thirty years ago, it still accurately describes the essential nature of organized crime today.

As Government commissions delved into the inner workings of the American mafia, millions of average people learned how the mafia was structured and how it operated. Critical to the success of the mafia was its tight structure: at the top level was aboss, or head of the family; next, an underboss; then a consigliere, or an advisor; then a capo who oversaw the day to day work of the organization; and then the soldier, who carried out the criminal activities of the group. The American mafia was controlled by twenty-four families, all of whom lived and operated within the United States. Their day-to-day activities included racketeering, prostitution, gambling, drugs, murders for hire, intimidation and protection rackets. To understand the scale of organized crime during the 1960's and 1970's it is important to note that New York's Genovese family included as many as twenty capos and 450 soldiers who carried out orders. Violence and intimidation were also a routine part of the mafia's inner workings, including the use of violence to protect their organization and target public officials for assassination.

The role of violence and intimidation were well-illustrated at the 1963 McClellan hearings and amplified twenty-three years later during the 1986 President's Commission on Organized Crime. In their final report, the commission wrote that: "Violence and the threat of violence are an integral part of the criminal group. Both are used as means of control and protection against members of the group who violate their commitment and those outside the group to protect it and maximize its power. Members were expected to commit, condone or authorize violent acts."

The Commission also noted the propensity for organized crime to breed corruption and flourish in an environment of corrupt officials. "Corruption is the central tool of the criminal protectors. The criminal group relies on a network of corrupt officials to protect the group from the criminal justice system. The success of organized crime is dependent upon this buffer, which helps to protect the criminal group from both civil and criminal government action." Violence, intimidation and corruption continue today to be essential tools used by international organized crime-particularly the international organized drug syndicates operating from Colombia and Mexico-to ensure their dominant positions in the world today.

The history of organized crime cannot be accurately told without a brief overview of the history of America's drug problem. Early on, reporting on American drug addiction was done at the federal, state and local levels by social service agencies. Gradually, federal law enforcement agencies became involved in reporting on addiction levels, and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a predecessor agency of the Drug Enforcement Administration gathered statistics on drug addiction during the mid 1950's. By 1957, the FBN estimated that there were over 44,000 addicts, although many experts believed the number was closer to 100,000.

A snapshot of the drug situation in Baltimore, Maryland in 1950 compared with 1997 illustrates how the scale of the drug problem has changed dramatically over the years. In 1950, Baltimore had 300 addicts out of a population of 949,708, meaning that one in 3166 individuals residing in Baltimore was a heroin addict. In 1997, 38,985 heroin addicts were reported in Baltimore, representing the fact that there is now one heroin addict for every 17 residents of Baltimore.

While the type of drug used by these drug addicts was not specified in FBN reporting, the predominant drug of choice at the time was heroin. And with the majority of addicts reported in the New York area, it is no surprise to learn that the five mafia families of New York controlled the heroin market in 20 major cities around the nation. Reporting on the heroin situation during the 1950's-1970's, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement in 1986 stated that: "the LCN (Cosa Nostra) controlled an estimated 95% of all of the heroin entering New York City, as well as most of the heroin distributed throughout the United States." New York's crime families obtained heroin from their Corsican sources who worked with French seamen to bring the heroin to the United States. Once there, it was distributed by the organized crime families to dealers working in low-income, minority communities.

Changes in the heroin trade between the 1950's and the late 1970's resulted in new sources of heroin available on the streets of the United States, and paved the way for the introduction of cocaine during the seventies. After the French Connection was broken, and the American mob's source of supply diminished, New York was no longer the main focus of drug trafficking activities.

In 1986, the President's Commission on Organized Crime reported that the mafia's monopoly on heroin distribution ended in 1972 "when under diplomatic pressure from the United States, Turkey banned opium production and the French Connection collapsed. Amsterdam replaced Marseilles as the center of European heroin traffic, and Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami joined New York City as major U.S. distribution centers. Other trafficking groups rose to compete with the LCN for heroin dollars in New York City and throughout the country."

The Rise of Cocaine

When cocaine entered the American drug scene in the 1970's, no one predicted how this drug would change the nature and scope of the international drug trade forever. Societal changes in America during the 1960's prepared the way for this new drug epidemic; the prevalence of illicit drug use in the United States had increased dramatically in a short period of time. During the sixties, less than five percent of the population had an experience with illicit drugs. By the early 1970's, that percentage had doubled to over 10%, and by 1979, when drug use in America peaked with almost a third of the population having tried drugs during a lifetime, it was clear that millions of Americans viewed drug use as normalized behavior.

Prior to the 1960's American drug use was limited to specific segments of American societyartists, underworld elites, and individuals living on the edge of society. When cocaine was aggressively marketed during the 1970's as a benign, chic drug, Americans believed that it could be used recreationally without long-term consequences. Few people fully understood the addictive nature of cocaine and it was not until the crack epidemic in the 1980's played out that American society appreciated how dangerous and destructive cocaine really was.

Crack was first reported in California and Texas, and its abuse was considered a local problem until 1985 when it spread quickly to almost every state and its use had become a major national medical and law enforcement crisis. Crack was far more addictive than powder cocaine and was marketed as a low-price alternative to cocaine, making it readily available to poor people in urban and rural areas. It also created tremendous violence in the user and contributed significantly to the escalating crime rates and social problems which plagued America during the 1980's and early 1990's. Between 1984 and 1993, when the crack epidemic raged, violent crime in the United States increased over 50% and murders increased by 31%.

But the most dramatic change wrought by the introduction of cocaine to America in the last twenty five years was the rise of the international organized criminal syndicates from Colombia.

Organized Crime in the 1980's: Cocaine and the Colombian Mafias

At the epicenter of the modern drug trade, Colombian drug mafias thrived in an atmosphere of violence, intimidation and corruption. They took advantage of their country's geography to build an empire of unprecedented proportions. Close to Bolivia and Peru, where coca had been grown for centuries, Colombia had coastlines on the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, giving traffickers ample routes to send their product to the United States. The first major cocaine

Violence and intimidation were also essential to the criminal enterprises of the Medellin group who employed an army of security forces to carry out acts of terror and assassinations. These private armies murdered hundreds of Colombian police officials, judges, journalists, and innocent people, including a Justice Minister and Presidential candidate. Two terrorist acts carried out by the Medellin group included the bombing of an Avianca airliner in 1989, which killed 110 people, and the bombing of the Department of Administrative Security (DAS) headquarters in December 1989, which killed 50 people and wounded 200.

Eventually, the Medellin cartel fell as its leaders were arrested or killed. Carlos Lehder was extradited to the United States in 1987 and Rodriguez Gacha was killed in a shootout with Colombian authorities in 1989. Extradition was outlawed by the Colombian Government in 1991 and soon after, the Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar surrendered to the Government to take advantage of the lenient sentences and prison conditions available to them. After a period during which Escobar ran his lucrative cocaine business from Envigado Prison, and after ordering the killing of a score of his associates, Escobar escaped from prison but was killed in a shootout with police in December 1993, after a lengthy manhunt by Colombian police officials.

As the Medellin cartel disintegrated, the Cali mafia quietly coalesced and assumed power equal to their predecessors.' Beginning as a loose association of five independent drug trafficking organizations, the Cali mafia employed many of the principles used by the traditional Italian mafia. Led by the Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers, Jose Santa Cruz Londono and Pacho Herrera, the Cali mafia was far more sophisticated than the Medellin group and eventually became deeply involved in all aspects of the cocaine trade, including production, transportation, wholesale distribution and money laundering. Whereas the Medellin group seemed to revel in the terror and violence that became their trademark and ultimately contributed to their downfall--the Cali mafia attempted to avoid indiscriminate violence, further contributing to their image as legitimate businessmen.

However, when the Cali mafia employed violence to attain their goals and they frequently did— it was precise and exacting. In the aftermath of the arrests of the Cali drug mafia leaders by the Colombian National Police in 1995, Cali assassins killed more than a dozen suspected government informants. They also used violence within the United States when necessary, as evidenced in the murder of the journalist Manuel de Dios Unanue, an outspoken critic of the Cali mafia who was murdered in Queens, New York in 1992. In May, 1996, John Harold Mena, who was in charge of the Cali mafia's New York operations testified in court that Jose Santacruz Londono had ordered de Dios' murder.

A key to the Cali mafia's success was its tight organizational structure. Their vast responsibilities and their intricate distribution networks in the United States necessitated that the Cali mafia rely on a sophisticated system which ensured maximum efficiency and minimal risk. Drug trafficking organizations from Colombia had always controlled the cocaine trade from top to bottom. Within South America, the Cali mafia, and before them, the Medellin group, depended upon the acquisition of tons of coca products from Bolivia and Peru which was then converted into cocaine HCl, generally in Colombia. These labs in Colombia ranged from simple labs to complex compounds where it was possible to produce up to one metric ton of cocaine per week.

The mafias also devised ingenious ways to deliver tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe over the years. Routes and techniques have been refined during the past several decades, and today over half of the cocaine entering the United States is shipped from Colombia through Mexico. Currently, maritime vessels are the primary means used by traffickers to smuggle cocaine from South America to Mexico, using the Pacific or Caribbean routes; traffickers are also using the highways of Central America to transport tons of cocaine from Colombia into Mexico. For a period of time, it was customary for traffickers from Colombia to ship metric ton quantities of cocaine into Mexico by plane but that method is less common at the current time. Once the cocaine is safely delivered to traffickers in Mexico, independent Mexico-based transportation groups subcontracted by the Colombian trafficking organizations arrange for the delivery of the cocaine to contacts within the United States.