"The Federal Bureau of Investigation had virtually no intelligence on the Mafia families, the largest crime syndicates in the United States, through the late 1950s." Mob and the City, p. 220.
This is a misleading statement. If you read Virgil Peterson's testimony at Kefauver in 1950, he and other agents definitely knew what was going on at some level. At the Federal level, the FBN had tons of intelligence and were feeding that information to the senators on the Kefauver panel. The FBN and FBI probably weren't sharing information. As far as national security, Hoover set top priorities elsewhere like the growing threat of Marxist Communism and Nazi spies during WWII etc. People who lean far to the left minimize or ridicule the Communist threat.
As far as Appalachin, it forced Hoover to change his focus, but there were plenty of people in law enforcement who knew exactly what was going on years before. The notion that no one knew anything prior to Appalachin is a big lie.
How is it misleading? He clearly wrote that the FBI had virtually no intelligence on Mafia Families, which is true and admitted by former FBI agents at every level, including Hoover himself. You are correct that the FBN and the FBI didn't share info and Hoover had other priorities. Alex didn't dismiss the fact that Hoover had other priorities and took on Communism, just that he underestimated the Mafia. A (intel on OC) has nothing to do with B (intel on Communism).
As for Virgil Peterson, he was an ex-FBI agent but at that time he was the head of the CCC and had access to all their files, which at that time was far more than what the FBI had on the Chicago Syndicate. He was able to give an excellent summary of the Outfit's history, but he had no idea about the actual structure of the Outfit, how it was divided into different crews, what those crews were, who had what rank and position, except for a few individuals and in a vague way. That did not come until later when the FBI developed informants and planted listening devices, and that only happened after Hoover realized his error.
