Old Time Feds, and Old time gangsters

[welsh]

I caught two shows on a relatively similar topics.

On NPR- the oldest living FBI agent remembers the "good ole days."

The beginning-

Weekend Edition Saturday, July 26, 2008 · The FBI turns 100 on Saturday. That makes former agent Walter Walsh one year older than his former employer.

Walsh was an agent when newsreels at the Saturday double feature were full of the drama, thrills and action of G-men tracking down criminals like John Dillinger, Ma Barker and the Brady Gang.

He joined the FBI in 1934, just a decade after J. Edgar Hoover took the helm and the bureau began to take the same kind of shape we see today. The G-men — or government men — were behind some of the most celebrated cases of the time, and Walsh thought he could be part of that. He signed up fresh out of Rutgers Law School.

"I thought to myself, this might be a good outfit to tie up with," Walsh says. "I am not trying to pin medals on myself, but the people in the FBI knew that I was very handy with firearms."

Actually, he was more than just handy.

You can read the rest.

ANd on 60 minutes we hear learn about one rather bloody gangster's "why I killed those 20 guys."

There are few men alive today with the underworld credentials of John Martorano, and even fewer who are out of prison and walking the streets. For more than a decade, Martorano was the chief executioner for Boston's Winter Hill Gang, a loose confederation of Irish and Italian-American gangsters run by James "Whitey" Bulger.

Martorano, a former Catholic altar boy and high school football star, became a cool and calculating killer. But as correspondent Steve Kroft first reported in January, he is perhaps best known as the government witness who helped expose a web of corruption and collusion involving the mob and the Boston office of the FBI.

This story seems right out of the Departed.

Hey, he confessed. What do you think about that sense of loyalty and ethics? Is it true- there is no honor among thieves (or gangsters)?

So what do you think? Have things changed so much? Were things better or worse?

 

[Pablosdog]

Things are worse now, organized crime is more of a secret thing then a byproduct of pulp novels and 1930's movie serials. It seems to be even more organized and coporate then it ever was. It seems alot of organized crime are going "Semi" legit, and that simply running a cutthroat buisness is all that's really required to make money. You still got your hitman out there, but I think it's alot less public and behind the scenes as opposed to the all out gang warfare that existed during prohibition for example.

*Edit* I'm not completly sure about a modern code of ethics if there really is one, I think it's all became buisness. $$$ equal more than human life or honor.

 

[DarkCorp]

Like someone else said its the same crime, just under a new guise. Instead of warring with the cops corporations just buyem off. If anything in a way its worse cause now we have lobbyists. Imagine Al Capone being buddy buddy with the highest man in government.

However there is somewhat of a goodside as well. Violence is now conrolled and coordinated, much like the masquerade in the Vampire games by whitewolf. Go gung ho and just shoot down cops and bystanders pretty soon SWAT moves in and if you live, all the political connections in DC don't wan tto touch you.

Overall I think as the masses get dumber and dumber, the less strong arm tactics are needed. Why beat someones face when good old coporate schmos and sales talk people into doing what they want.