by Joe Pistone
It looked good on paper, but once I notified the Bureau of our decision and they moved us to a house about 40 miles outside of the city in the South, I was stuck with the decision. What I hadn’t figured on was the aggravation the decision would bring my way for the almost ten years I was assigned to that city’s FBI field office under the supervisor of that office and the rules by which the FBI operates.
In my book Donnie Brasco I was kinder to the Bureau regarding my decision to resign than Jules Bonavolonta was in his book, The Good Guys. I wrote that I resigned from the FBI in 1986 to write my book. Jules said I resigned because of the aggravation I was getting from the head of the southern city’s field office the whole time I was undercover and the whole time I was testifying. I did resign and write the book. However, using that same legal phrase for causation—the “but for” standard—I have to admit that but for my problems in the field office in the South, my service in the FBI would not have been interrupted by my resignation in 1986, five years shy of qualifying for a pension.
Jules, bless him, didn’t pull any punches in his book, so since it’s in print anyway I don’t mind giving the rest of the story. My southern discomfort made the job I did harder on a daily basis.
Sometimes it takes dramatic events to change established policy in the FBI. Until 1933, Hoover’s FBI agents were not allowed to carry guns at all times. That year unarmed agents were gunned down and killed while escorting a prisoner in Kansas City. After that we were trusted with guns.
The SAC (Special Agent in Charge) of the southern field office to which I was assigned did not like undercover operations or undercover agents. He did not like the change in policy that undercover operations represented. I don’t know if he was an old-school Hooverite or if he just had his own old-school opinions. But I do know the guy never worked the streets. His only experience with undercover was what he saw on TV: spending money, driving flashy cars, wearing leather jackets, and all the other stereotypical fluff television offered. He believed all undercover agents were slackers because they didn’t come in to the office; they didn’t sign in and sign out. Of course, he didn’t consider that coming into an FBI office, besides being a waste of time, could get you two behind the ear. Many a Mafia soldier was whacked after someone reported seeing them go into or out of an FBI office without telling their boss first.
Not to mention that undercovers, when you think about it, are actually “signed in” 24 hours a day at times. We often work round-the-clock for weeks on end without overtime pay. When my day did end at six in the morning, I didn’t go home. I went to my New York apartment or Sonny’s apartment, and I was still working. If I got home to my real home three nights in five months, it was a good five months.
What made the SAC’s bias more intense was the fact that when an agent is transferred to a field office, the agent goes on that office’s books for statistical purposes, like going “on record” with a Mafia crew. And like a Mafia crewmember, the agent is expected to be an “earner,” to carry his own weight statistically. But when I arrived, I wasn’t producing any stats for the SAC’s office. I counted as an agent, but I was not producing any arrests or convictions. In effect, I was watering down and weakening the SAC’s statistics when the inspectors came by to evaluate his office.
Hoover had set up a system of periodic inspections that was like a bank audit. Stats were kept on the amount of time an agent spent per criminal case. I wasn’t keeping any of that time because I was not working on a specific case. I certainly was not working on any cases out of my own field office since there was no connection between the Bonanno family and that city.
In 1981, when they finally swept everybody up after Donnie Brasco came out, the field office in the South didn’t get a single conviction. The SAC got no credit on his office’s books for anything I did. And all the time he carried me while I was under, he knew that’s exactly what would happen when I came out. In comparison to other field offices, he’d come up empty in the field-office-stats department.
Meanwhile, the Bureau had made no allowance for this supervisor because a long-term undercover operation like this had never been done before. Jules tried to get me on Headquarters’ roles, but there was no provision for me to be listed at Headquarters—not even on paper—because I wasn’t a supervisor. So I had to stay on that field office’s rolls.
While I was working undercover, despite his rumblings and some petty moves, my southern SAC had no efficient way to exercise any real control over me. I was in New York or wherever, but not in my own field office in the South. However, once I became a witness and consultant on cases, and had a chance to be home in my own field office’s territory near my family, the S.O.B. SAC vigorously campaigned to assert his dominion and control over me—even though I was actually working for various prosecutors and field offices around the country at the same time.
To facilitate my trial preparation and their trial preparation, the prosecutors and Jules installed another phone line in our home. They wanted me available at all times to answer questions of prosecutors and other FBI agents. They installed state-of-the-art electronic equipment for me to review the hours and hours of seemingly endless tapes of bugs and wiretaps, almost all of which I had never heard before. In a sense, while I was strategizing and preparing for my own testimony by reading mounds and mounds of material and listening to tapes, I was a glorified translator of Mafia code talk for the Bureau.
I was on the phone all the time with prosecutors and FBI field offices. I was basically working out of my house if I wasn’t traveling. And I wasn’t dealing with just one federal district and the personalities of those in that district; I was dealing with many districts at once—Milwaukee, two districts in New York, and two districts in Florida. Plus I was on the phone with districts in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and elsewhere. Everyone wanted to better understand the cases they had by understanding the structure and rules of the Mafia and the ways of the wiseguys they were prosecuting. In many cases, I knew important details about defendants from snippets of conversations I had picked up in the course of six years. Despite the lawyer jokes, prosecutors are honest and dedicated, but they are not all alike. Some got it quickly, some needed handholding, and some needed convincing, especially about RICO. I also spent a lot of time at the United States Marine Corps training camp at Quantico, Virginia, the site of the FBI’s training academy, giving lectures on the Mafia and on undercover work.
Meanwhile, my SAC was constantly bitching to the Bureau about me. I don’t know why, because if I said I was home, I was always home. Still, he would often call my house to make sure I was there. One time, my wife told him off. He would ask my buddies in the field office whether I was actually working when I was at home. As if I would jeopardize the tough undercover work I did by slacking in my trial preparation or by failing to continue striving toward the goals and the unfinished business of the Donnie Brasco operation.
His direct bitching to the Bureau at Headquarters went on for years and years, both while I was undercover and during the strategizing and the legal and educational phases of the operation.
Unfortunately for me, there was little I or Jules or his supervisor Sean McWeeney, the head of Organized Crime for the Bureau, could do about it. A Special Agent in Charge is like a general in the military. There are four-star generals at Headquarters, and the SAC of a field office is like a one-star general. But they are all generals, and a general will not go against another general, right or wrong. As Lefty had explained to me about a made man, “When you’re not a wiseguy, the wiseguy is always right and you’re always wrong. It don’t matter what. Don’t forget that, Donnie. Because no other wiseguy is going to side with you against another wiseguy.”
Finally, after the bitching went on for years, the SAC convinced the Bureau that I should come into the field office every day. He gave me an office right near his so he could watch me. I had my phone, my electronic equipment, and my paperwork sent to the office. I had to drive 40 miles each way so
he could watch me work.
But still he wasn’t satisfied. One day I went to lunch and when I came back a buddy of mine greeted me.
“The boss was looking for you,” my buddy said. “I told him you went out to lunch. He said to me, ‘Why did Pistone go out to lunch if there’s a contract on his head?’ I told him because it was lunch time, I guess.”
One time I had to go to New York to meet with Barbara Jones and Louis Freeh, and then south to Quantico, Virginia to give a lecture. In the back of the lecture room I spotted a supervisor from my home field office who, I assumed, was getting his in-service training. After my talk I said to him, “Nice of you to come, I really appreciate it.”
“Joe,” the supervisor said, “I’ve got to be honest with you. The boss told me to come here to make sure you were here.”
I played varsity sports. My wife was a cheerleader. Cheerleading really can work; the old home-court advantage from a crowd on your side. The reverse is also true. Naysayers can drain your morale. I vowed I would not let this guy get to me.
He was the one who tried to make waves when I was accused of stealing $250,000 by a defense attorney in the Bonanno family trial. I don’t know how he found out, but he started asking my friend Jimmy about the new car my wife had bought. “You got a problem with Joe, ask him,” Jimmy said. When he tried to get an investigation out of Headquarters, Jules stepped in and stopped him.
Can you imagine the trouble for all my cases—past, present, and future—if the FBI had launched an investigation of my integrity? And I’m not just talking about the headache he was causing me; this wrongheaded supervisor with a grudge could have ruined all our work by undermining my trustworthiness as a witness. I was not going to let anything stand in the way of our getting the Commission.
During a holiday break in a New York court case, I was back in my office in the South going over testimony and preparing on the phone with Barbara Jones when an agent walked in.
“We got a wiretap at Huntsville Prison,” he said. “You’re on Saturday.”
That meant that I had been scheduled to sit in a van with headphones on listening in on a wiretap regarding an investigation into alleged corruption at a large Texas prison.
“Who gave you the authority to put me on a wiretap?” I asked.
“Joe, it’s not me,” the agent said. “He put you on.”
The agent didn’t have to tell me who “he” was.
“I ain’t going on the schedule,” I said.
I headed straight for his office. He was there behind his desk. I didn’t sit down.
“You put me on the schedule at Huntsville?” I said.
“That’s right. You’re on and you’re going.”
“I’m not going.”
“What do you mean you’re not going?”
“I’m not going. I’m in the middle of a major case and you know it.”
“You’re being insubordinate.”
“I’m using my head, which you’re not.”
He picked up the phone. “I’m going to have you fired,” he said.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Like the Bureau’s going to fire me in the middle of all this.”
“I want you fired. I’ll have your job. You undercovers aren’t really agents.”
“I’m a better agent than you are, ever were, or ever will be. It’s bad enough when you question my integrity. Don’t you ever question my ability as an agent. I’ll throw you out this window.”
He saw my eyes and put the phone down and didn’t say anything.
“I’m not going on the wiretap,” I said and walked out of his office and back to mine.
The phone rings. It’s Jules.
“Joe, come to New York,” Jules said, and that’s all he said, but I knew why. I was being sent for. Like in the Mafia, when they send for you, you don’t question. You just go.
Meanwhile, I’m still in trial. On the plane I had to read transcripts I could have been reading at home. Just when I got a break and got a chance to be with my family in the South, here I was flying back to New York. In New York I sat down with Barbara Jones, Louis Freeh, and Jules.
“I’m fucking quitting right now,” I said. “If the Bureau can’t keep this guy from breaking my balls I’m quitting.”
“Let’s talk to Rudy,” Barbara said.
We went into Rudy’s office and we filled him in. Rudy picked up the phone and called FBI Director William Webster, the only man to ever head both the FBI and the CIA.
Rudy ran the entire story by Webster and I was assured that I would be left alone from now on to do the work that I had been assigned to do by the Department of Justice itself. I was really in no position to quit, anyway, because I did not have 20 years in to qualify for a pension.
Things did cool down a bit after that, but he couldn’t help himself. The nitpicking never went away entirely, and over time it gradually increased again.
I tried to stay focused on the glass being way more than half full. We got an indictment on the Mafia Commission Case. We had a trial date and we were working with a missionary zeal.
I was getting offers on the book and I knew there was plenty more work ahead for me. My testimony was coming up in the Commission Case and I viewed it as the most significant moment of my career. I wanted to be fresh as a daisy for it. I knew I needed a break. I especially needed a break from the petty aggravation in my field office. I didn’t want to be in any kind of grumpy mood on the stand. I decided to take a little time off and go on leave.
I filled out a CBR, which means “Can Be Reached.” You have to leave a phone number at which you can be reached while you’re away. Even on leave you have to be reachable. This was before we all got cell phones. And the rules required that you had to be reachable at the specific number you wrote down on the CBR. You can’t leave a number of somebody else who can then reach out for you. It has to be a direct connection to you. If you leave a number where you can be reached, it had better be a number where you will be reached if you are called.
You guessed it. I got a call. He had a supervisor call just to check up on me to make sure I followed regulations and left a number that I could be reached at. When I answered the phone, the supervisor was embarrassed because he had no reason to call me.
I said, very simply, “I fucking quit.”
I’m the only person I know who quit the FBI on the telephone.
Many people I respected and cared about tried to talk me out of it: Jules; Jimmy Kallstrom, head of the New York office; Lin DeVecchio, in charge of the Mafia Commission Case; Sean McWeeney, head of the Bureau’s Organized Crime section; prosecutors Barbara Jones, Louis Freeh, and Rudy Giuliani; and many others. I listened to them and weighed what they said to me. But I’d had it, and there was no turning back. The FBI was already too inflexible to accommodate the job I did and was still doing, and it would only get worse for me in the Bureau when I got a book deal. That kind of personal glory coming my way would create petty jealousies that would only add fuel to the fire.
I told them I would continue to testify with no pay from the Bureau. And I did, from 1986 until I returned to the Bureau in 1992 and was put back on the payroll. That was around the time Big Joey Massino got out of jail.
They did pay for my hotel and my airfare, like they would for anybody else. And I continued to be available to prosecutors and field offices for consultation, at no charge to the Bureau. But when I testified in the Mafia Commission Case, I was Mr. Joseph D. Pistone, not Agent Pistone.
And as much as I missed being an agent, the same hand from above that guided every step of the Donnie Brasco operation was still in charge. Things continued to be spectacular in my life. I could continue to fight the Mafia and do whatever Rudy and Jules and the crew needed me to do, but not on a leash extending from my SAC in the South to wherever I was.
And I could fight the Mafia by making everything I knew about the Mafia available to the public. A book about my experiences deep inside the Mafia would also educate prosecu
tors and law enforcement in the same way I had been educating them one-on-one, but much more efficiently.
When I look back, I see that what the SAC in that nameless southern city did was a gift. I never got a bad break. When I look at what they did to Lin DeVecchio years later—accusing him of feeding information to his informant in the Mafia so his informant could use that information to whack rivals and snitches—I’ll never have a reason to complain. That could have been me.
Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno, the original boss and namesake of the Bonanno Mafia family.
Phillip “Rusty” Rastelli, Bonanno boss while I was under.
Me (left) and my Bonanno capo Sonny Black (right) lounging poolside in Florida.
Tampa boss Santo Trafficante (left) and Sonny Black meeting in Florida.
Bonanno capo Big Joey Massino outside Toyland.
Frank Balistrieri, head of the Milwaukee crime family and Bonanno family collaborator.
Bonanno boss Carmine Galante lying dead with a cigar clenched between his teeth in the backyard of Joe & Mary’s Restaurant in Brooklyn.
Bonanno captain Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera.
Bonanno captain Philip “Phil Lucky” Giaccone.
l-r: Nicky Santora (with hand in pocket), Boots Tomasula, and Sonny Black (far right) outside the Motion Lounge.
1-r: Joey “The Mook” D’Amico, Cesare Bonventre, Tony Mirra, and Toto Catalano.
1-r: Bonanno underboss Nicky Marangello (left) and Bonanno consigliere Steve “Beef ” Cannone.
Bonanno capo Bruno Indelicato.
Bonanno soldier, and the target of my one and only Mafia contract, Sonny Red Indelicato.
