gambling and organized crime in which Joseph Valachi testified about the activities of the Sicilian Mafia, the Billie Sol Estes case, irregularities in missile procurement, procurement of the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark fighter plane, excessive risks in underwriting Federal Housing Administration mortgages, riots, and civil disorders, the Agency for International Development commodity import program, and procurement of railway bridges for South Vietnam under the counter-insurgency program. The Subcommittee's investigations also led to passage of major legislation against organized crime, most notably the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO act"), which is a section of the Organized Crime Control Act passed in 1970. In 1973, Senator Henry M. Jackson, a Democrat from Washington, replaced McClellan as the Subcommittee's chairman and Senator Charles H. Percy, an Illinois Republican, became the Ranking Minority Member. During Senator Jackson's chairmanship, the Subcommittee conducted landmark hearings into energy shortages and the operation of the petroleum industry. Nunn-Roth era The regular reversals of political fortunes in the Senate of the 1980s and 1990s saw Senator Sam Nunn trade chairmanship three times with Delaware Republican William V. Roth Jr. Nunn served from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1987 to 1995, while Roth served from 1981 to 1986, and again from 1995 to 1996. Senator Roth led a wide range of investigations into commodity investment fraud, off-shore banking schemes, money laundering, and child pornography. Senator Nunn inquired into federal drug policy, the global spread of chemical and biological weapons, abuses in Federal Student Aid programs, computer security, aviation safety, and health care fraud. Federal financial aid and proprietary colleges In the early 1970s, student loan programs created by the Higher Education Act of 1965 and subsequent legislation had begun to produce evidence of fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. In November 1975, the Permanent Subcommittee held four days of hearings that followed on staff investigations that focused largely on West Coast Schools, a for-profit school that had grown quickly with federal loan money and closed after questions were raised about its operations. Secretary of Education Ted Bell told the Subcommittee “It must be kept in mind that when the floodgates were opened in 1968 to allow virtually every kind of institution operating on an interstate basis to lend under the program—public, private, profit, nonprofit, noncollegiate, and correspondence schools—we had only 50 persons on the staff.” In the late 1980s, skyrocketing student loan defaults led the Permanent Subcommittee to again