Lindsey Graham

But while Capone may have been surprised by this shift in the federal government's tactics, he refused to be intimidated.

He had lived much of his life impervious to the law, and he had no plans to stop now.

On March 20, 1929, Al Capone returned to Chicago from Miami to face questions from a grand jury about bootlegging and the money he made from it.

Capone wasn't especially worried, though.

For years, the government had him in their sights and failed to pin anything on him, so what would be different now?

In fact, he was so dismissive of the grand jury subpoena that he arrived back in Chicago a day later than he was supposed to appear, leading the court to hold him in contempt.

In the end, Capone answered the government's questions for 80 minutes and then came back a week later to sit for another hour.

When it was over, Capone reported to jail to serve his one-day sentence for contempt, but he seemed otherwise unbothered.

This was just another annoyance that was now behind him.

But inside the halls of government, the machinery was turning.

President Herbert Hoover was now embracing Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Wildebrand's strategy to use unpaid income tax to bring down Capone.

He appointed Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon to oversee the investigation, who sent in a team of IRS agents to start building a paper trail that could be used to charge Capone with a federal crime.

Oblivious to the government's investigation, Capone got back to work.

He had been in Florida for several months, and there was a lot to do to put his outfit back in order.

Capone's rival gang, the Northsiders, may have been irreparably damaged by the St.

Valentine's Day massacre, but the Sicilians were still causing problems, and Capone had a list of his own guys who he felt had betrayed him while he was away in Miami.

There were also bigger problems on the horizon.

For years, it had been clear that America's experiment with Prohibition was a failure.

Instead of curbing alcohol sales and solving society's ills as its advocates had hoped, it had done the opposite.

More bars and clubs filled Chicago than ever before, though they operated illegally.