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Statement on Signing Executive Order Establishing the National Council on Organized Crime.

June 04, 1970

ORGANIZED CRIME in the United States has three goals: exploitation, corruption, and destruction. What it cannot directly exploit, it seeks to corrupt; what it cannot corrupt, it seeks to destroy. Its degrading influence can be felt in every level of American society, sometimes in insidious, subtle ways, but more often in direct acts of violence and illegality. It is a malignant growth in the body of American social and economic life that must be eliminated.

Today I am establishing a National Council on Organized Crime, under the chairmanship of the Attorney General, to formulate an effective, coordinated national strategy for the elimination of organized crime.

The creation of such a council is the inevitable result of the success of the Federal Strike Forces--or organized crime field offices--in metropolitan areas where the organized crime problem is most concentrated. These Strike Forces consist of attorneys trained by the Department of Justice and agents and investigators from other departments and agencies.

This program requires a unique cooperative effort on the part of several Federal departments and agencies having diverse primary responsibilities. Up to this time, however, working relationships between representatives of these various departments and agencies have been developed on a regular basis only at the operating level.

With the creation of the National Council on Organized Crime, composed of representatives of all the Federal departments and agencies having major responsibilities affecting or affected by the activities of organized crime, the fight against this evil will have the necessary strategic as well as tactical planning.

I wish the Council and its distinguished and able membership an early success.

Note: The Council was created by Executive Order 11534.

Richard Nixon, Statement on Signing Executive Order Establishing the National Council on Organized Crime. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239830

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