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The transcript was released on the orders of U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shaw, whose action raised a host of knotty legal questions, including the rights of those scores of public officials named in the conversations. Many denied any connection with the hoodlums. Democratic Leader Wilentz, who was named, fumed: "It is utterly outrageous that hearsay conversations between organized criminals—people who will lie and drop names to make themselves important—should be released without the slightest regard to those who are publicly smeared." Governor Hughes lamented that the disclosures provide no protection for the innocent.
The transcript cannot be used as evidence, consisting as it does of unsworn hearsay obtained illegally. The Justice Department believes that publicizing the information serves a vital function to alert the public to the Mafia menace. U.S. Attorney Frederick Lacey, prosecuting De Carlo, said in a recent speech: "The searchlight of publicity must be brought to bear on the slime eating away at our society." Obviously, there must be some truth in the transcript; it contains too precise a knowledge of many high officials to be entirely false. But even the FBI admits that many public officials' names may have been included because of Mafioso braggadocio rather than collusion. Unfortunately, the transcripts do not draw that distinction.