of the Federal Witness Protection Program, the paper trail would lead them back to this moment and the thick, blue-bound presidential commission’s recommendations. Those who took the time to look behind the panel’s one-paragraph recommendation would find Gerald Shur. But what no one, including Shur, realized in 1967 was the significance of what had been started. Thousands of lives were about to change, many for the better, others for the worse, because of his seemingly straightforward suggestion.
PART TWO
BREAKING OMERTÀ
I
f you have any doubts that the mob’s most basic tradition—its code of silence—has broken down, just look at what’s happening now.… Right this minute, there are more than seven hundred guys under federal protection [in WITSEC]. All of them have squealed on the mob. They’re street punks, big moneymakers, and made guys.… They’re talking because the government is providing them with something they can’t get anymore from their own: protection, real protection
.
Vincent Teresa, mobster
My Life in the Mafia
, 1976
CHAPTER
SEVEN
H aving never created a new identity or a false background for anyone, Gerald Shur sought advice from the experts. He contacted the Central Intelligence Agency but decided it did too good a job creating false histories. “I wasn’t going to send a witness to penetrate a foreign nation, and I didn’t need to give anyone a deep cover,” he said. “What I needed was just enough new documentation for someone to get a fresh start in a new community.” Shur was worried about helping witnesses too much. “Most of them would be criminals, and I didn’t want them using us to get away with new crimes.” He asked Marcy Edelman, one of his criminal intelligence analysts, what documents she thought a witness would need to start over. They agreed that each person would need a minimum of three records: a new birth certificate, driver’s license, and Social Security card. If the witness had children, school records would need to be produced.
Shur would later marvel at how much simpler it had been in the late 1960s and early 1970s to obtain documents and fabricate a new past than it is today. There were few computerized records and no Internet. Credit-reporting companies were in their infancy. Most birth and death records were kept in city or county courthouses scattered across the country, andthere was little or no effort to cross-index them. Many states had laws that prohibited insurance and credit card companies from requiring applicants to provide their Social Security numbers; they were considered private, only for use when filing taxes. This meant there was no standard universal identifier or number that followed a person for life, as there were in some European countries.
Shur turned to people he knew personally and trusted for help in getting documents. Several state’s attorneys arranged for him to get new birth certificates. He convinced the director of a motor vehicles department to provide him with new driver’s licenses. “Of course, I wouldn’t give anyone a driver’s license unless he already had a valid one.” Obtaining Social Security cards was more complicated. Initially, Shur had witnesses apply for a new number, but this meant each witness then had two different numbers—his original one and his new one. “My plan was that after a witness died, his family would send a letter to Social Security and explain that number A matches number B, and then Social Security would combine the two accounts,” Shur said, “but this created all sorts of problems. I eventually got officials at Social Security to create a new account for our witnesses and transfer their funds from their old number into the new one.” School officials in a Washington suburb agreed to help him with school transcripts. “We would get a child’s school records, black out the child’s name, and give those records to a school official. This official would then copy the
PART TWO
BREAKING OMERTÀ
I
f you have any doubts that the mob’s most basic tradition—its code of silence—has broken down, just look at what’s happening now.… Right this minute, there are more than seven hundred guys under federal protection [in WITSEC]. All of them have squealed on the mob. They’re street punks, big moneymakers, and made guys.… They’re talking because the government is providing them with something they can’t get anymore from their own: protection, real protection
.
Vincent Teresa, mobster
My Life in the Mafia
, 1976
CHAPTER
SEVEN
H aving never created a new identity or a false background for anyone, Gerald Shur sought advice from the experts. He contacted the Central Intelligence Agency but decided it did too good a job creating false histories. “I wasn’t going to send a witness to penetrate a foreign nation, and I didn’t need to give anyone a deep cover,” he said. “What I needed was just enough new documentation for someone to get a fresh start in a new community.” Shur was worried about helping witnesses too much. “Most of them would be criminals, and I didn’t want them using us to get away with new crimes.” He asked Marcy Edelman, one of his criminal intelligence analysts, what documents she thought a witness would need to start over. They agreed that each person would need a minimum of three records: a new birth certificate, driver’s license, and Social Security card. If the witness had children, school records would need to be produced.
Shur would later marvel at how much simpler it had been in the late 1960s and early 1970s to obtain documents and fabricate a new past than it is today. There were few computerized records and no Internet. Credit-reporting companies were in their infancy. Most birth and death records were kept in city or county courthouses scattered across the country, andthere was little or no effort to cross-index them. Many states had laws that prohibited insurance and credit card companies from requiring applicants to provide their Social Security numbers; they were considered private, only for use when filing taxes. This meant there was no standard universal identifier or number that followed a person for life, as there were in some European countries.
Shur turned to people he knew personally and trusted for help in getting documents. Several state’s attorneys arranged for him to get new birth certificates. He convinced the director of a motor vehicles department to provide him with new driver’s licenses. “Of course, I wouldn’t give anyone a driver’s license unless he already had a valid one.” Obtaining Social Security cards was more complicated. Initially, Shur had witnesses apply for a new number, but this meant each witness then had two different numbers—his original one and his new one. “My plan was that after a witness died, his family would send a letter to Social Security and explain that number A matches number B, and then Social Security would combine the two accounts,” Shur said, “but this created all sorts of problems. I eventually got officials at Social Security to create a new account for our witnesses and transfer their funds from their old number into the new one.” School officials in a Washington suburb agreed to help him with school transcripts. “We would get a child’s school records, black out the child’s name, and give those records to a school official. This official would then copy the
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