Monday morning, December 8, 1941, the day after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, everyone was waiting to hear news that President Roosevelt would address Congress and ask that they declare war on Japan. According to Mike Reilly, former Secret Service Agent, the Secret Service had determined the previous night that a bulletproof car was needed immediately to protect President Roosevelt from possible assassins sympathetic to Japan or Germany.

But federal law prohibited purchasing any automobile that cost more than $750. There wasn’t time to wait for legislation authorizing the purchase of such an expensive vehicle, nor the time that would be required to build one. FDR would need the car by Monday morning.

Reilly, head of the 70-man White House detail, discovered that after Chicago gangster, Al Capone, was convicted of income tax evasion in 1931, the US Treasury Department had seized the crime boss’s bulletproof 1928 341A Cadillac Town Sedan. It had a whopping curb weight of 9,000 pounds.

Capone’s Cadillac was green with black fenders, making it look identical to the Cadillacs, 85 of them, that were supplied to Chicago police and city officials. However, it had 3,000 pounds of bulletproof armor beneath the standard body. Its windshield and windows were made of recently developed inch thick bullet proof glass.

On December 8, 1941, when Roosevelt left the White House headed for the Capitol to ask Congress to declare a state of war existed with Japan, he made the trip in Capone’s refurbished Cadillac.

Capone and his criminal empire owned several automobiles purchased from Cadillac dealerships in the name of a "Mr. Brown." The 1928 Cadillac the Treasury Department confiscated is believed to have been one of two. The fate of the other possible vehicle is still unknown.