Agent Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley

The man who most benefited from Prohibition was Al "Scarface" Capone, a Chicago mobster who was making as much as $100 million a year running distilleries and breweries that supplied booze to speakeasies, bookie joints, gambling houses, and brothels.

Capone's nemesis was Eliot Ness, a special agent of the U.S. Department of Justice and head of the Prohibition bureau in Chicago. Ness assembled a nine-man squad of agents—nicknamed the "Untouchables" because they could not be bribed—to destroy Al Capone and his empire. The agents discovered Capone's breweries, which were disguised as regular warehouses, by following trucks loaded with empty barrels destined to be filled with bootleg liquor. In the excerpt below, Ness describes the method of operation for raiding Scarface's breweries in Chicago.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Ness served in the U...