Valachi, the first member of organized crime to testify under oath about the inner workings of the underworld. Albini claims that Cressey accepted whatever Valachi said as fact, no questions asked, while composing his report for the Presidents Commission. Even though Cressey himself claimed that Valachi “will tell you only what he thinks you want to hear.” Albini surely believes that this misleading information received by Cressy led to his faulty conclusions. Rogovin and Marten state that they feels it ludicrous and near immature for Albini to truly believe that Cressey, a very well educated man would be bamboozled by the likes of Valachi. Rogovin and Martens believe that Cressy being the excellent, skilled, and cautious listener he was would have been able to peer through the mendacious exterior of Valachi, and get to the truthfulness behind it. Albini claims that Cressey has committed three grievous errors in reaching his conclusions. The first being, he was lacking an accurate definition for researching purposes. Albini maintains that throughout all of Cressey’s work, Cressey never established a proper definition of organized crime. Albini asserts this lack of definition as to what limited Cressey‘s research, and therefore to his inaccurate conclusion. The second error Cressey committed was he failed to critically evaluate his data. Albini recognizes where the information came from that was presented to Cressey, but still feels if Cressy had taken into account the differences and biases of those who offered the information to the Task Force and to Cressey individually, his conclusion would have turned out differently. The third of Albini’s major grievances is that Cressey presents a very limited background and history of the Mafia in Sicily. Albini alleges the Mafia in Sicily never acted as a secret organization. He claims that if Cressey had read the existing material available then h...
