Al Capone and the transformation of the IRS
4/2/202652 min
Gangsters, banksters, and politicians. Today on the show, how the hunt for Al Capone helped turn the IRS into one of the U.S. government's most powerful tools — and most effective weapons. This episode originally published in May of 2025.
Guests:
Joe Thorndike, historian for Tax Analysts and author of Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR.
Paul Camacho, retired special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and member of the board of directors at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
Jason Scott Smith, historian at The University of New Mexico and author of two books about FDR and the New Deal.
Lawrence Reed, president emeritus of The Foundation for Economic Education.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Rund Abdelfatah· Host0:17
[car engine] February 14th, 1929, Valentine's Day. Around 10 in the morning, a Cadillac pulls up to a garage on the North Side of Chicago. Four guys jump out of the car. Two are dressed in police uniforms. Inside the garage, they find seven men, six of whom are members of a gang led by George Bugs Moran, who runs things on the North Side. Cops come around all the time looking for a bribe, just the cost of doing business. Moran's men do as they're told, hand over their guns, line up against the wall. But then suddenly, Thompson machine guns appear from under the coats of the cops, [machine gun firing] and they start firing. 70 rounds later, Moran's men lie slumped on the ground in a pool of their own blood.