SYNOPSIS OF “ALL AGAINST THE LAW”
“All Against The Law” covers U.S. major crime in the Great Depression era. It is the incredible story of daring prison escapes and breathtaking fugitive runs by the Great Depression’s four successive Public Enemies Number One – John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Alvin Karpis with the Barker brothers. These were the most aggressive and dangerous killers ever. When fleeing from pursuing lawmen every one of these bank robbers whirled their cars around and floored their accelerator or ran in the open charging pursuers while relentlessly blasting away with machineguns. All these ferocious counterattacks made them dreadfully successful at killing the most policemen and FBI agents of any American outlaws.
Against these fierce killers, Congress assigned a fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation, an accounting agency of government money made up of politically-appointed accountants and attorneys with no police experience. Headed by J. Edgar Hoover, a librarian, he failed to teach his agents any of the fundamentals of police and detective work or instruct them to respect individual liberties and rights. Thus his courageous but ill-prepared early agents conducted one amateurish and failed raid after another interspersed with disastrous results for both his agents and innocent civilian bystanders caught up in the lines of fire.
Hoover’s leadership and management of the FBI has been thoroughly discredited by contemporary exposé articles and scholarly historical biographies. This book penetrates the veil much further in presenting how politically-conservative Hoover failed to prosecute serious criminals, used underhanded illegal tactics against critics; occasionally fought to survive his malfeasance in office; and blackmailed errant Congressmen to further his own political agenda, as he became an unaccountable malevolent fourth branch of the federal government totally outside the brilliantly-conceived Constitutional checks-and-balances system.
To disprove FBI target Pretty Boy Floyd was involved in the Kansas City Massacre that slaughtered four lawmen, and to finally reveal the actual perpetrators and their motives, the town’s unique political structure is laid bare. The town’s political kingmaker’s lieutenant was also the city’s Mafia leader who selected the chief of police and his detectives. The state legislature tried to stop this affront to justice by having the governor appoint a Police Commission to control the city’s departmental hirings. This action just led Kansas City’s Mafia chieftain to expand his political sphere of influence across the state to elect puppet governors who appointed Commissioners of his choosing.
These Kansas City political leaders stuffed ballot boxes in every election of politically-progressive Harry Truman, who later became the only president to sell out to organized crime because he was politically tied to the Kansas City Mafia. The entire last chapter strictly covers the many interactions Truman in the White House had with this Mafioso. Their mutual political hijinks, conflicts, and intrigue are beyond mind-boggling. As tensions mounted this Mafioso was murdered, and Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress directly accused the President of ordering his political henchmen to kill him.
Based on 47 years of research, this book has an enormous amount of new information. It details upwards of 100 major crimes, and it presents several cases of false convictions that were ultimately overturned, including a famous case of injustice in which new evidence demonstrates the perp was unquestionably guilty. This book exposes major corruption by politicians, police detectives, prosecutors, and judges. Justice eventually prevailed as the vast majority were sent to prison, but most received much shorter prison terms than the criminals they protected.
This book has 34 pages of 326 endnotes documenting the enormous number of source documents, and the subject Index is 14-pages of double-columns.
