(Melchizedek Communique, MC0101b09) On February 5, 1930, Philip Meagher was brutally attacked by two gunmen. Repercussions of the attack are believed to have ultimately caused the downfall of Al Capone.

Meagher was job superintendent at a construction site on Chicago's south side. A new hospital was being built. Meagher was employed by the H.B. Barnard Company, accused of using non-union labor. The Capone Outfit was trying to muscle in on labor unions, to control them and increase the political power of the gangsters. It appeared that Meagher had been shot as a warning against non-union labor.

Harrison Barnard, the builder of the hospital, read the message loud and clear. But instead of acquiescing to demands, Barnard went to see Colonel Robert Isham Randolph, president of the Chicago Association of Commerce. According to Dennis E. Hoffman (Scarface Al and the Crime Crusaders), here is what Harrison Barnard said to Colonel Randolph:

"My partner and I believe this shooting is the beginning of war. The first signal that the gangs are muscling in on us and mean to have a piece of the pie. If they're given half a chance, they won't let up till every contractor in Chicago is tossing a divvy into the pot."

Prompted by Harrison Barnard, Colonel Randolph met with the executive committee of the Chicago Association of Commerce (CAC), as well as with State's Attorney John Swanson. "The Citizens Committee for the Prevention and Punishment of Crime", "loosely under Randolph's chairmanship", was born. Soon thereafter, a reporter asked for information on the Citizens Committee. When Colonel Randolph refused to reveal the names of members, the reporter, on the spur of the moment, invented the name, "The Secret Six". [1]

Do not let that name, "Secret Six", hurriedly coined by a reporter, mislead you. These were not specifically six anonymous persons. They did not carry an official card saying, "Member Number (1 through 6), Secret Six." The Secret Six was a loosely-knit network of like-minded Chicago blue bloods. A civil war was raging in Chicago between them and an emergent counter-force.

One member of the Secret Six has been uncovered by Thomas Barnard, a writer and friend of the late Saul Bellow. It was Thomas Barnard's grandfather, Harrison Barnard, who had sparked the formation of the Citizens Committee for the Prevention and Punishment of Crime, nicknamed the Secret Six, immediately after the Meagher shooting. In his grandfather's scrapbook, Thomas Barnard discovered a secret confession, written in ink on an old newspaper clipping: "I was one of the Secret Six."

The Secret Six connected with various agencies, among them the Prohibition unit for the Chicago federal district.

Chosen by Colonel Randolph to be operating director of Secret Six was the chief special agent of the Prohibition Bureau in Chicago, Alexander G. Jamie. Eliot Ness, brother-in-law of Alexander Jamie, was picked to head a special unit which would "raid [Al] Capone's breweries, tap his telephones, and spy on his operations."

Elmer Irey, head of the U.S. Treasury Department's intelligence unit, had agents Frank Wilson and Pat O'Rourke investigate Al Capone's income. Tax evasion charges, it was hoped, could be brought against Capone. Wearing flashy gangster fashions -- white hat, purple shirt, and a checkered suit -- O'Rourke rented a room at the Lexington Hotel, a gangster hangout at the time. There he kept his ears open, and picked up occasional inside information. Wilson, separately, began gathering records from various Capone enterprises. Eventually, Wilson laid hold of Leslie Shumway, who had been a bookkeeper for Capone. Shumway testified before a secret grand jury, which charged Capone with evading income taxes. On June 5, 1931, Capone was indicted on 22 counts of tax evasion. Meanwhile, back at the Lexington Hotel, secret spy O'Rourke learned that five assassins had been brought in from New York to murder Frank Wilson. Thanks to this timely intelligence, the plot was thwarted.

Al Capone was found guilty of tax evasion. While waiting to be moved to the federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia, a reporter asked Capone as to who deserved credit for bringing him down. "The Secret Six licked the rackets," replied Capone. [2]

Colonel Robert McCormick, then-owner of the Chicago Tribune newspaper, seems to have been part of the Secret Six network. But it is not easy even now, more than 70 years later, to definitely name all who were involved. Among those listed by Hoffman (op. cit.) as "having had a hand" in Secret Six are Julius Rosenwald, Frank F. Loesch, Samuel Insull, Edward E. Gore, George A. Paddock, and Colonel Robert Isham Randolph.

------- Sources -------
Besides the report by Thomas Barnard ("The Secret Six"), other facts cited are found in chapter 8, "The Mystery of the Secret Six", 
in Dennis E. Hoffman's book, Scarface Al and the Crime Crusaders (Carbondale: SIU Press, 1993)
[1] Hoffman, op. cit.
[2] qtd. in Hoffman, op. cit.