relocate someone, we then had to give them a new identity so they couldn’t be followed.”
At about the same time that Shur took charge of the OCRS’s mob witnesses, Charles Rogovin knocked on his office door. Rogovin, a professor at Temple University Law School in Philadelphia, was a member of a blue-ribbon panel that President Johnson had appointed in 1965 after the Republican Party accused him of being soft on crime. The panel, formally known as the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, was in the midst of a two-year nationwide study of crime in America. It planned to conduct five national surveys and had started interviewing thousands of prosecutors, police, attorneys, judges, criminals, and crime victims for their views about how the government could better fight crime. Rogovin had been questioning Justice Department officials, and one of them had suggested he talk to Shur.
“I’m looking for fresh ideas,” Rogovin told him, “and I was told that you had some.”
Shur described the OCRS’s computerized intelligence system for organized crime and how the ten analysts running it were all women. “We need to bring more women into law enforcement,” Shur said, “if for no other reason than to perform desk jobs so we can get more gun-carrying officers onto the streets.” He talked about the need for more computerization and sharing of information between agencies. Near the end of their meeting, Shur also said the government needed to establish a witness protection program. “We need government safe houses,” he explained, “places where wecan hide these people temporarily until we can relocate them.”
Rogovin was impressed when he left Shur’s office. “Here was a man who I thought had a number of very interesting ideas,” he said later. “Everyone else seemed to assume that witnesses who testified against organized crime were going to be whacked. But Gerry was saying that it didn’t have to be that way. It was clear to Gerry that there was a need to do something in a much more sophisticated way to help witnesses than simply handing them a bus ticket to Toledo.”
Rogovin relayed Shur’s ideas to Henry Ruth Jr., the presidential commission’s deputy director, and Ruth put them into writing for the full panel to review. Its final report was presented to President Johnson at a White House ceremony in February 1967, and two of Shur’s ideas were included in it. The panel recommended that local and state police departments begin using computers to collect and share information about the LCN. And then it addressed Shur’s idea about witness protection.
No jurisdiction has made adequate provisions for protecting witnesses in organized crime cases from reprisal. In the few instances where guards are provided, resources require their withdrawal shortly after the particular trial terminates.… Therefore the commission recommends that the Federal Government should establish residential facilities for the protection of witnesses desiring such assistance.… After trial, the witness should be permitted to remain at the facility so long as he needs to be protected. The federal government also should establish regular procedures to help federal and local witnesses who fear organizedcrime reprisal to find jobs and places to live in other parts of the country, and to preserve their anonymity from organized crime groups.
The panel’s endorsement had an immediate impact. “Now it was not just Gerald Shur who was running around the Justice Department talking about how the government needed a formal witness protection program,” Shur recalled. “A presidential commission had recommended that we begin protecting witnesses, and this gave the idea credibility and tremendous political clout. I jumped on that report. It was exactly what I needed to really get the ball rolling.”
When historians, politicians, journalists, and critics would later set out to find the origins
At about the same time that Shur took charge of the OCRS’s mob witnesses, Charles Rogovin knocked on his office door. Rogovin, a professor at Temple University Law School in Philadelphia, was a member of a blue-ribbon panel that President Johnson had appointed in 1965 after the Republican Party accused him of being soft on crime. The panel, formally known as the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, was in the midst of a two-year nationwide study of crime in America. It planned to conduct five national surveys and had started interviewing thousands of prosecutors, police, attorneys, judges, criminals, and crime victims for their views about how the government could better fight crime. Rogovin had been questioning Justice Department officials, and one of them had suggested he talk to Shur.
“I’m looking for fresh ideas,” Rogovin told him, “and I was told that you had some.”
Shur described the OCRS’s computerized intelligence system for organized crime and how the ten analysts running it were all women. “We need to bring more women into law enforcement,” Shur said, “if for no other reason than to perform desk jobs so we can get more gun-carrying officers onto the streets.” He talked about the need for more computerization and sharing of information between agencies. Near the end of their meeting, Shur also said the government needed to establish a witness protection program. “We need government safe houses,” he explained, “places where wecan hide these people temporarily until we can relocate them.”
Rogovin was impressed when he left Shur’s office. “Here was a man who I thought had a number of very interesting ideas,” he said later. “Everyone else seemed to assume that witnesses who testified against organized crime were going to be whacked. But Gerry was saying that it didn’t have to be that way. It was clear to Gerry that there was a need to do something in a much more sophisticated way to help witnesses than simply handing them a bus ticket to Toledo.”
Rogovin relayed Shur’s ideas to Henry Ruth Jr., the presidential commission’s deputy director, and Ruth put them into writing for the full panel to review. Its final report was presented to President Johnson at a White House ceremony in February 1967, and two of Shur’s ideas were included in it. The panel recommended that local and state police departments begin using computers to collect and share information about the LCN. And then it addressed Shur’s idea about witness protection.
No jurisdiction has made adequate provisions for protecting witnesses in organized crime cases from reprisal. In the few instances where guards are provided, resources require their withdrawal shortly after the particular trial terminates.… Therefore the commission recommends that the Federal Government should establish residential facilities for the protection of witnesses desiring such assistance.… After trial, the witness should be permitted to remain at the facility so long as he needs to be protected. The federal government also should establish regular procedures to help federal and local witnesses who fear organizedcrime reprisal to find jobs and places to live in other parts of the country, and to preserve their anonymity from organized crime groups.
The panel’s endorsement had an immediate impact. “Now it was not just Gerald Shur who was running around the Justice Department talking about how the government needed a formal witness protection program,” Shur recalled. “A presidential commission had recommended that we begin protecting witnesses, and this gave the idea credibility and tremendous political clout. I jumped on that report. It was exactly what I needed to really get the ball rolling.”
When historians, politicians, journalists, and critics would later set out to find the origins
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