Modern bugging and wiretapping sprouted in the late 1940's and was really blooming big-time by the 1960's. Miniature electron tubes and the newly invented transistor were the seeds. The seediest places were New York City and Los Angeles. Here are two short LA stories...
Mickey Cohen, high-tech gangster
This episode began (1949) when vice officers arrested another of Mickey's men for illegal possession of a weapon. Enraged, Mickey arrived at his underling's trial with his personal bugging expert, 300-pound J. Arthur Vaus, and announced that they were going to blow the lid off the LAPD.
It seems that a vice detective working out of Hollywood had hired Vaus to eavesdrop on the Strip's leading madam, hoping to document her unholy relationship with a rival vice cop from downtown. But the madam insisted that she was paying off both cops,and Mickey's rotund bugger said he had the damning evidence on magnetic wire. They brought a recorder to court and plopped it on a table, daring anyone to call their bluff.
A grand jury did. It had the wire recordings seized and discovered they'd been erased. In one of the more bizarre chapters of a bizarre time, Vaus attended a Billy Graham crusade, found the Lord and confessed his sin -- he'd lied about the tapes. (more)
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The mobster who died in pink pajamas, or how The Gangster Squad got to Jack Dragna by bugging his mistress' bed.
His nighttime attire notwithstanding, Jack Dragna was everything Mickey Cohen was not: cautious to a fault and allergic to limelight. With Dragna, icy distance was the rule when the squad members camped outside his banana warehouse or the Victory Market, where he held meetings in a concrete-walled back room.
The squad's bugging expert, Con Keeler, did once get in between the rounds of a night watchman, but he didn't have time to fully conceal his bug. Dragna's men found it, carried it outside and smashed it on a curb...
The younger Dragna's (law) suit was pending in 1951 when the squad bugged the bed of his father's mistress. She was a secretary for the dry cleaners union, in which the mob had its hooks. If a dry cleaning shop didn't sign up, Dragna's men would send over suits with dye sewn inside so all the clothes in its vats turned purple or red.
The secretary had a wooden headboard with a sunburst pattern. While she was out, Keeler picked the lock to her apartment and hid a mike in the center of the sun. Amid the pillow talk, the bug picked up occasional mentions of mob business, including plans for a new casino in Las Vegas...
Dragna's lawyers could argue that the police didn't have a warrant to eavesdrop, but to no avail -- back then authorities could use illegally obtained evidence.
The misdemeanor case earned Dragna a mere 30-day sentence, but how and where he was bugged stood to cost him respect in the mob... he died in 1956. (more) (background about these two stories) (one more really great bugging story - 2/3rds down the page)
30+ more great electronic-eavesdropping history stories await you at Murray's Eavesdropping History Emporium.
