When did the WITNESS RELOCATION PROGRAM start and who administers it?
The Witness Security Program we know today is an evolution of individual cases that began in the early 1960s and were investigated by the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section (OCRS) of the U.S. Department of Justice. This group was led by U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and included Gerald Shur, the man who would go on to create the Witness Security Program. The Witness Security Program was authorized as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. Within this law was the section Title V: Protected Facilities for Housing Government Witnesses, which outlines the basic tenets of what would become the Witness Security Program. It says that the Attorney General can provide for the protection of witness in “whatever manner deemed most useful under the special circumstances of each case.” This law gave the Department of Justice wide latitude to accommodate what attorneys deemed necessary to protect witnesses. Nearly 15 years later, the powers of the Attorney General with resp
The Witness Security Program we know today is an evolution of individual cases that began in the early 1960s and were investigated by the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section (OCRS) of the U.S. Department of Justice. This group was led by U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and included Gerald Shur, the man who would go on to create the Witness Security Program. The Witness Security Program was authorized as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. Within this law was the section Title V: Protected Facilities for Housing Government Witnesses, which outlines the basic tenets of what would become the Witness Security Program. It says that the Attorney General can provide for the protection of witness in “whatever manner deemed most useful under the special circumstances of each case.” This law gave the Department of Justice wide latitude to accommodate what attorneys deemed necessary to protect witnesses. Nearly 15 years later, the powers of the Attorney General with resp
