Name-Dropping

Trials resurrect an old charge

Does Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan, who was a New Jersey construction executive before he took office, have ties to organized crime? None that would be possible to prove in court, a special federal prosecutor decided last year. But whether Donovan has had business and personal links with gangsters—he denies any such affiliation—there are gangsters who claim they know him well.

The latest allegations of this sort cropped up in New York courtrooms last week. Two men who had cooperated with the special federal prosecutor were killed in the summer of 1982 just as the prosecutor's investigations were...