On 23 July 1965, Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson issued Executive Order 11236, establishing the Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. Atty. Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach was asked to chair a nineteen-member commission whose numbers included former attorney general William P. Rogers; American Bar Association and later Supreme Court justice Lewis F. Powell; Julia Stuart, president of the League of Women Voters; New York City mayor Robert Wagner; Yale University president Kingman Brewster; Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler; San Francisco police chief Thomas Cahill; California attorney general Thomas Lynch; director of the Urban League, Whitney M. Young; federal judges Luther Youngdahl, James Parsons, Charles Breitel, and future Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski; and several leading law professors and attorneys. This blue ribbon panel worked for two years with 63 staff members and 175 consultants to produce its report, entitled The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice 1967). The report, issued in February 1967, made over 200 recommendations. A new focus of this effort was placed upon victimization, as the commission conducted a survey of 10,000 households regarding their experiences with crime. A secondary focus was given to organized crime activity. Although gambling did not receive much attention, the report offered some strong words about the activity:
Law enforcement officials agree almost unanimously that gambling is the greatest source of revenue for organized crime…. In large cities where organized crime groups exist, very few of the gambling operators are independent of a large organization. Anyone whose independent operation becomes successful is likely to receive a visit from an organization representative who convinces the independent, through fear or promise of greater profit, to share his revenue with the organization.
The report suggested that gross revenues from gambling in the United States resulted in profits of $6 to $7 billion for organized criminals each year.
The recommendations did not include any that focused specifically upon gambling crimes; however, new weapons for dealing with organized criminals were advanced, including a clarified statute on the use of wiretapping, witness immunity and protection programs, special grand juries, and extended prison terms for criminals involved in illegal businesses (that is, gambling enterprise). Every law enforcement organization from the federal government down to the municipal level was urged to have an organized crime section, and citizens and business groups were urged to create permanent community crime commissions.
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