User blog comment:Blackendedsoul/Smoker's Bravery/@comment-3242083-20120319194521/@comment-3425840-20120319230727

Yes the higher ups did knew his heritage. But they also knew that Luffy defeated Moraih but did not increase his bounty for that. My point is, as the thing was not public info they could not use it for the reason for making the bounty.

About top dogs, well in my book the top dogs are the Yonko, Stronger Shichibukai, slite marines (Admirals and the likes) and some random lone guys like Rayleigh. Smoker was no where near that level at that point of time.