by Joe Pistone
At the termination of the long-term deep-cover operation, Agent Pistone found himself the key witness in major trials he helped produce against the Mafia. “I made Rudy Giuliani a star,” he once joked with me over coffee. But there’s actually a lot of truth to that. Certain homicide cops made me a star prosecutor, and those that are still living know who they are and they know I know it.
Agent Pistone did his precarious job to perfection, and without fear. He never succumbed to normal emotions of the moment; and always remained as focused as a brain surgeon. “To work deep cover long-term,” Agent Pistone said, “you’ve got to be mentally tough. The whole secret is to be mentally tough.” The mentally tough role Agent Pistone performed, creating it as he played it, became the foundation on which he helped build the cases for his courtroom crusade against the Mafia. No doubt, Joe Pistone the producer, writer, and actor made stars of many a prosecutor who directed each case’s final performance.
In this sequel to Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, Joe Pistone will reveal, for the first time anywhere, some of the darker inside information that could not have made its way into that classic book. As a practical matter, there was a larger and more unique story to tell in that early volume. To appreciate it, and without interrupting the nail-biting drama of that story, the reader had to be educated along the way to many things that we all now seem to know about the Mafia subculture. We know these things, in great measure, because of what Agent Pistone did and wrote about. In a sense, inside information would have been too much information in that first book. Also, Agent Pistone did not want the first book to be a fertile field for cross-examination by defense attorneys in the trials that were then ongoing and upcoming. Perhaps out of a sense of self-protection, as a citizen and a witness, he omitted some things and glossed over others, such as his participation in armed hijackings, beatings, and other daily Mafia activities. He played close-to-the-vest those intense feelings such activity engendered in him as he took part in them.
Thanks to the standard set by Donnie Brasco and a few other books and movies that succeed (unlike The Godfather movies) in truly and accurately portraying the filthy business of organized crime, Joe Pistone is now ready to reveal to today’s reader the dark nature of what Agent Pistone as Donnie Brasco had to do to survive each day of those dangerous days, hour-by-hour, on our behalf.
While some of the facts in Donnie Brasco must be recounted here to give the new revelations a proper context, Agent Pistone analyzes, for the first time, the implications and long-term results of all of the actions of his years undercover. The analysis is something that needed the passage of time and the maturity of the crops he planted for Pistone to be able to sow. A naturally modest man, Joe Pistone needed prodding to express some of this. But it is an essential part of American history that only Joe can fully analyze.
After he surfaced from his deep cover, the FBI learned that the Mafia’s ruling Commission had put out an open contract for $500,000 on Agent Pistone’s head. “They sent guys all over the country looking for me, but obviously they didn’t find me,” Pistone said. The danger was not so much that a particular hit man had been ordered to kill him for money, but that word had been put out among the cowboys, the wannabes, and the nut jobs with ambitions to be Mafia soldiers, that it would do them good somehow to kill Agent Pistone if they ever got the chance. Such a wannabe loser in search of a reputation shot Wild Bill Hickock in the back. “Getting a nut” is an expression Frank Sheeran taught me, which is one Mafia method for putting out a murder contract.
Recently, in a New York City coffee shop, when one of the stated objectives of this book was first discussed with Joe—namely, the importance of exploring details involving the dirtiest and darkest part of his undercover work—he gave a hard short laugh and said, “I’ve got to be careful what I tell you. It’s not beyond some prosecutor to read it and decide they want to do something.”
By “do something,” Joe meant “prosecute” him for committing such crimes.
I didn’t blame him for being concerned about this. Like a soldier in combat, he was forced by circumstances to experience and do things on our behalf he’d rather not have to explain to us. And now he was about to. I thought, what a tightrope this man has had to walk and still walks twenty-five years later. When Agent Pistone went undercover in 1975, prosecutors were not out to build reputations on the prosecuting of cops; that, too, has changed.
Joe and I ended up sipping our coffee, building a rapport, and talking about that exact phenomenon in the recent annals of law enforcement.
This conversation took place many months before the 2006 arrest of a dear friend of Joe’s, Lin DeVecchio, a long-retired FBI agent whose arrest was based on alleged decisions he made during cases fifteen to twenty years ago.
While there will be a couple of chapters devoted to the dark side of his deep cover, Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business lets us see through Joe’s eyes how his perilous performance as Donnie Brasco ultimately caused the Mafia to unravel thread by thread over the next twenty-five years—both through their own implosion and through the U.S. Department of Justice.
When Agent Pistone was pulled and the secret undercover operation was revealed on July 28, 1981, every single wiseguy everywhere in the country was staggered. They were bewildered and stunned by what Agent Pistone had pulled off against them. Their energy was demonstrably sapped; their almighty confidence shaken to its core. Bosses who smirked at United States senators in hearings; bosses whose organizational rules were enforced by unsolvable murders; bosses whose everyday business was carried out under chains of command with no visible links leading up to them; bosses of an organization with its own secret language, spoken, if at all, in code; bosses who over centuries perfected the art and science of making their positions as impervious to American or Italian law as Hitler’s was to German law; were now shown by a single agent of the FBI to be as vulnerable to law enforcement as an ordinary low-life drug dealer. Self-destructive paranoia set in.
The more intelligent members of the five main Mafia families—Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese—became increasingly private and careful. They began distrusting everyone and started killing often on less than “mere suspicion alone.” They also began allowing lesser talents to rise to more highly visible and prominent positions, which were now more vulnerable positions.
The authoritative and commanding American Mafia, organized in 1931, is today in shambles. And as this book will reveal, the super heroism of Agent Joseph Dominick Pistone is the principal reason why. More than the so-called tipping point, his brave work is the wrecking ball of demolition that made the arrest and conviction of Mafia bosses for the crimes they ordered, including murder, almost commonplace today.
Agent Pistone will recount the rewarding, exciting, and hazardous undercover work he performed in America and abroad for the FBI after the Donnie Brasco operation, as well as the training, teaching, and mentoring he has done for hundreds of other brave men and women about to go under. To wit: Agent Pistone is responsible for the FBI’s undercover certification school and for establishing psychological safeguards for the deep-cover agent.
Now-retired Agent Pistone will explore the rewards that citizen Joe Pistone has reaped, besides the gratification of bringing down a significant number of Mafiosi who gave all Italian-Americans a black eye and the joy of watching the New York Mafia begin to breathe its last from the severe beating he gave it. Joe will take us inside the glamorous and well-deserved opportunities that opened up for him as a result of his undercover extravaganza as Donnie Brasco.
This tale about Joe Pistone’s unfinished business will open, improbably for the young Italian-American boy from the streets of Paterson, New Jersey, in Hollywood—or more precisely, on location in 1996 in Brooklyn, as technical adviser for the making of the movie Donnie Brasco. Today, a grandfather in his sixties, “over budget” are the scariest couple of words the film producer, Joe Pistone, ever has to hear.
; But can the artist formerly known as Donnie Brasco ever truly let his guard down?
I wouldn’t advise it. Would you?
As Joe Pistone taught the world to say: Fuggeddaboudit.
CHAPTER 1
HOLLYWOOD
IF YOU EVER GET A CHANCE to have Johnny Depp play you in a movie, go for it. Especially if you have daughters; they’ll love it. And I have three beautiful, smart, and talented daughters, raised largely by their mother while I was undercover for six years and then testifying around the country for many years thereafter. My daughters loved Johnny Depp—and loved the fact that he played me in the film Donnie Brasco. But then everybody loves Johnny Depp. Johnny is an exceptionally thoughtful and considerate man. I’ll give you an example from the filming of a scene that took place in a social club. But first, let me explain the meaning of these clubs.
Social clubs are Mafia crews’ country clubs. It’s where the crew hangs out. Each crew has its own private club. Most of them are storefronts. Needless to say: crewmembers only.
John Gotti, boss of the Gambinos, was infamous for planning murders and other crimes with his underboss, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, at two social clubs—the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy and the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club in Queens. The Gambinos didn’t do much fishing, but they did stock the waters of the East River from time to time with bodies. The two friends rose together in their social clubs and fell together in their social clubs when the FBI secretly bugged the club buildings and Sammy the Bull turned rat and took down his partner, the Dapper Don.
At five-foot-ten and 300 pounds, Big Joey Massino, a powerful capo (and eventually boss) in my family, the Bonannos, planned murders, hijackings, and other illicit business in the J & S Cake Social Club in Queens. The J in the social club’s name stood for Joey, and the S stood for Sal—Bonanno soldier “Good-looking” Sal Vitale—Joey’s boyhood friend and brother-in-law. Both of these partners at J & S were to rise together and figure prominently in the future of the Bonanno family.
While many Mafioso end their lives as guests of the government, traditionally life in the Mafia begins for all of these people in a little social club. One of the aims of the movie Donnie Brasco was to give the audience the feel of the life and the rhythms inside one of these important little clubs in particular, the Motion Lounge.
The crew I was a member of for the last two years of my deep cover—from 1979 to 1981—hung out at the Motion Lounge social club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The Motion Lounge belonged to the capo and acting street boss of the Bonannos, Sonny Black Napolitano. His name was Dominick, like my middle name, but he was called Sonny Black because of the jet-black hair coloring he used. Nothing for nothing, but Sonny could have used help from a film’s makeup department.
Getting back to Johnny, the film’s art directors questioned me over and over again in order to get the interior of the Motion Lounge down perfectly for the movie. They succeeded. On the movie set of the interior of the Motion Lounge, shot in a Brooklyn armory, there is a scene where the crewmembers are simply hanging out as usual, playing cards, smoking cigarettes, having drinks, reporting to Sonny Black, and generally talking swag. One of them has the line, “I got a load of Schick razor blades.” This actor kept blowing the line. The director couldn’t take it any more and finally blew up at the actor. Everything was quiet for a second. The next thing you know, Johnny Depp gets up and says, “Stop picking on him. If I blow a line, are you going to yell at me?” Everybody relaxed. And knowing that Johnny had stuck up for him, the actor nailed his line on the next take.
A number of my friends from growing up in the streets of Paterson, New Jersey, were extras in the movie, Donnie Brasco. A high school buddy, George Angelica, played Big Trin, one of the three powerful Bonanno capos executed in a famous Mafia hit on May 5, 1981. The simultaneous nature of that hit is reminiscent of the famous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre by Al Capone in Chicago. The three-capos hit also took place on a holiday—Cinco de Mayo. And what’s left of the Bonanno family today is still feeling shock waves from the Fifth of May massacre of Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera, Anthony “Sonny Red” Indelicato, and Phillip “Phil Lucky” Giaccone—all of whom were in a fatal allegiance with power-hungry Carmine Galante.
After that massacre, both my capo Sonny Black and capo Big Joey Massino moved up the ladder together. The Bonanno family boss, Rusty Rastelli, in jail at the time, gave Sonny Black the power of acting street boss, while he put Big Joey Massino in charge of the family’s big moneymaker, the importation of heroin from Sicily. Technically, Sonny and Big Joey had equal power as capos, but in actual practice Sonny did the kinds of things that a boss would do on the street. For example, in the real boss’s absence due to jail, Sonny had face-to-face meetings with other family bosses.
In fact, Sonny Black (along with Lefty “Guns” Ruggiero—my closest mentor in the Mafia) told me that before the hit on the three capos could be carried out, Sonny, on Rusty’s behalf, met with Big Paul Castellano at his palatial home in Staten Island, known as “The White House.” Big Paul was the boss of the Gambino family, as well as the boss of bosses of New York’s five Mafia families—Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese. Sonny hinted that in return for cutting Big Paul in on some of the profits from the Bonanno heroin operation, Big Paul gave his blessing to the hit on the capos.
Hits bring the quickest advancement in the Mafia. Just like in corporate America, you climb the ladder by eliminating somebody. When self-appointed Bonanno boss Carmine Galante got whacked with a cigar clenched between his teeth in the backyard dining area of Joe and Mary’s Restaurant in Ridgewood, Brooklyn, in 1979, both Sonny Black and Big Joey Massino instantly went from soldier to capo, and Rusty Rastelli, although still in jail, moved back in as boss.
After the May 5th murders of the three capos—remnants of Carmine Galante’s faction who were suspected of plotting a coup to wrest power from jailed boss Rusty Rastelli—Sonny Black as the new acting street boss suddenly had jurisdiction over all 102 “made men” of the Bonanno family. That is, 102 men who had been formally inducted into the family in a secret, quasi-religious ceremony. Men who were now officially wiseguys and could call themselves wiseguys and goodfellas. Men who got their button, got their badge, got straightened out. Men who from the moment they were inducted suddenly had untouchable street power and a form of diplomatic immunity. One hundred and two made men in the Bonanno family to add to all the made men in the four other New York families, a force of evil with nothing to do but steal, deal, and kill.
I myself was scheduled to be “made” in December, 1981, once the big boss of the family, Rusty Rastelli, got out of jail. But for my own safety, after six years undercover, the Bureau yanked me from the operation a few months before that could happen. They thought that the three-capos massacre would lead to a Bonanno family civil war and put me in the middle—and in the most danger yet of being whacked. I thought I had my best stuff ahead of me for the later innings. Still, it was the manager’s call to pull the plug on the operation. So, instead of being made, I was soon making movies.
One of my daughters, a professional actress, played the girlfriend of actor Bruno Kirby, one of the featured gangsters. One of my granddaughters played her own mother (as a child) in the movie. For security reasons, I don’t like to use family names. But Anne Heche, a lovely person who was very nice to my granddaughter, played my wife; and one of my three daughters was played by the real-life daughter of that daughter.
That may sound funny and require some thought to understand, but it is nowhere near as funny as Johnny Depp’s fart machine—something that required no thought to appreciate. Johnny would surprise an actor or crewman with it and the laughter wouldn’t stop. People ask me if Johnny is Italian and I tell them what he said to me when I asked him: “I’m one part Cherokee and the rest mutt.” Johnny had a kitchen in his trailer on location and I did a lot of cooking. What else would I cook on the set of a movie about wiseguys? Sausages, peppers, steaks, meatb
alls, pasta, and different sauces, of course.
Al Pacino had a personal assistant who cooked, too. We had a little friendly competition. Al Pacino was a very private man on set; no fart machines in his repertoire. But he can be hilarious at dinner when he’s comfortable and gets to know you. Al was attached to the picture from the beginning. Look at me using words like “attached.” I’d come a long way from my days of hanging out at the Motion Lounge. Now I found myself involved in discussions about a different kind of shooting—shooting scenes, not people.
Anyway, Al was originally going to play me. But executive producer Barry Levinson talked him out of it, correctly pointing out that Al would make a terrific Lefty Guns Ruggiero, the first made gangster and Bonanno soldier who claimed me as part of his crew. When Sonny Black became a capo in 1979 after the Galante hit, Lefty and I were folded into Sonny Black’s crew—Lefty as a made man and me as a valued associate, a connected guy, not a made guy. Once Al Pacino was settled into the role of Lefty, Al then recommended Johnny Depp to play me.
At one time or another we had a lot of stars attached to the movie to play me, including Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, John Cusak, and Nicholas Cage. Can you imagine? Nothing for nothing, but they were all okay by me. Each one of them would have brought their own special talent and quality. Nevertheless, Johnny was a stroke of Al Pacino’s genius.
All the actors were real sticklers for getting to understand and know the real people behind their character. Nearly every character was based on a real person, dead or alive. Johnny Depp spent day after day with me for over a month before any shooting began so he could get down my mannerisms and speech. Even during the shoot he would check with me before takes, which could happen at any time. The workday begins at 7 a.m. and can end at three o’clock the next morning. When Johnny wasn’t actively shooting a scene, we would lift weights together and generally hang out. All the while he continued to study me and ask questions.
