ABSTRACT
Most of the people working in Washington, DC, just called him the “man in the green hat.” During the 1920s, he was a familiar face in the halls of Congress. He arrived early every morning, wearing his jaunty green fedora and disappeared down to his office in the basement. His name was George L. Cassiday Sr. and he was a bootlegger. While all of America was banned from buying and selling alcohol, the legislators gave Cassiday and his green hat an office and plenty of business. Cassiday got started in bootlegging after he returned home from serving in First World War. In 1930, an election year, Cassiday was caught delivering an order by a Prohibition officer. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail, and his bootlegging career was over. But Cassiday wasn’t going out without telling his story: He wrote a five-part series for The Washington Post newspaper, which appeared just one week before the 1930 elections.
