by Joe Pistone
CHAPTER 15
DONNIE BRASCO AT HOME AND ABROAD
WHILE ALL THIS WAS GOING ON—the Mafia Family cases, the Mafia Commission case, and so on—I still had a job to do besides providing background on the Mafia and testifying in court. And that job took me both back to my roots at the FBI training center in Virginia to assist recruits, as well as halfway around the world to bust badguys of all stripes. Whether I was training undercovers, or going back under myself on new operations, I loved my job and was always ready for the next opportunity—whatever it would be.
Here are a few stories of my time away from the Mafia cases, doing what I do best.
“THE RETREAD”
“Who’s the old guy?” the kid with the muscles asked.
“Don’t you know?” the other recruit answered.
“He looks pretty old to be just joining the FBI.”
“He’s a retread.”
“What’s that?
“Dude, I hope you don’t expect me to run your mile for you, too.”
The kid with the muscles laughed and said, “I guess a retread means he’s been through this before.”
“Ever heard of Donnie Brasco?”
“Sure, I read the book.”
“He’s your retread.”
“Get out. Way cool. I knew there was something about that old guy. He’s got that Corleone look.”
“I wouldn’t say that to him, dude, if I were you.”
I cleared my throat and they turned around. “Break’s over, men,” I said and headed into the classroom. I had just given them a lesson in the danger of idle chatter.
I took my seat and now I was the pupil.
So here I was in Quantico, Virginia. It was May 1992 and I had become a retread. Normally . . . well, there is no normally. The Bureau lets very few who quit return to duty. But the ones who they did let return, they would just run them through the firearms part of training. Once they qualified on all the weapons, the Bureau would admit them back in. In my case I had to complete the entire sixteen weeks of New Agent Training.
My fame had forced the Bureau to make sure that, for morale purposes, no one could claim I was getting any favoritism. I understood that and I agreed with them because I would have to work alongside my fellow agents and I didn’t want anyone thinking I thought I was anything special. I did my job as Donnie Brasco and I would do my job as SA Pistone.
To begin with, my application to return got neglected. I applied, and over a month later I had not even received a confirmation that my application had been received. I didn’t want to call Jules or anyone else because I didn’t want to start out on the wrong foot. Still I didn’t like being ignored. If they didn’t want me back all they had to do was say so. Every once in a while I thought of my former supervisor from the southern city. He had been transferred to Headquarters, but he was in a different section and should have had nothing to do with my application.
Finally, I got a call from a buddy who knew I had applied, Agent Steve Salmeri.
“Your application, Joe,” my buddy Steve said to me. “Have you heard anything?”
“Not a damn thing. Why? Have you heard something?”
“No, but I had a feeling you deserved a heads up.”
It turned out that despite my suspicions, I was merely a victim of inertia. My application sat on the application supervisor’s desk. He didn’t know what to do with it so he just let it sit there. My buddy Steve had heard it was in the same spot on the desk for weeks so he decided to call me.
With that news I had no choice but to call Jules who, as usual, straightened out the unusual for me.
People ask me why I returned, and yes the pension was a consideration, but I was doing very well from the book and the movie deal. And there were more book offers out there and plenty of ways I could have traded on my fame to make bundles.
I didn’t have to rejoin the Bureau to be involved in getting the Mafia. Without being an agent I kept up to date with what was going on in the five families. I was consulted from time to time. Watching from the sidelines and getting the inside scoop from my personal friends and sources was very gratifying. Seeing all the chaos we created paying huge dividends with inferior bosses like Amuso and Gaspipe was something I actually could do better by staying out of the Bureau. I was reachable at all times and for all kinds of information. Back in the Bureau, I would have a certain level and the rules would keep me out of the loop unless I was specifically needed for something. And I’d be less available to my old friends and colleagues. I’d be off on assignments all over the world—posing as an American wiseguy.
Furthermore, I certainly didn’t rejoin to work the five families cases. Undercover was my area of expertise and my special talent. That is how I knew I would be used if I rejoined. I was more than washed up as an undercover agent against the five families. Whatever I did to them, and whatever the outcome of what I did would be, was out of my control. This was only troublesome to me with respect to the Bonanno family. The boss, Rusty Rastelli, had ordered the hit on Sonny Black and I could never lift a finger to unravel that hit and bring anyone to justice.
In summing up the consequences the Mafia Commission Case had on each of the five families in New York, Jerry Capeci wrote, “The Bonanno family has had the most stable leadership.” Ouch.
The unintended result of my having gotten the Bonanno family kicked off the Commission was that not a single Bonanno boss, underboss, or consigliere was in the Mafia Commission Case. Although, in the can on the local 814 Case, Rusty Rastelli remained boss and groomed his successor, Big Joey Massino, for a smooth nonviolent and legitimate succession. Ouch again. Big Joey got out of jail the year I returned to the Bureau, and while I watched him build the family back up to the number one spot in the city, I would never work the Bonanno family again.
They say that gamblers are addicted to adrenaline. The high comes while the coin is in the air, not when it lands on heads or tails. I was accused by an interviewer of running on adrenaline for so long as Donnie Brasco that it was hard for me to give it up. Maybe that’s why I returned to the Bureau and put in four more years. Another interviewer suggested I knew the Bureau needed me and that I felt I still had something unique to contribute, something the Bureau couldn’t get from anyone else: a ready-made Italian gangster named Donnie. At times like these, I would just nod and say, “You might be right.”
But I know the main reason I returned to the Bureau. It was simple, and didn’t need any analyzing. I was not finished as an FBI agent. I still had a lot of FBI living to do. I had loved being an agent and I missed it. I also knew that there was a lot of unfinished business for me in the Bureau. I might never be Donnie Brasco again, but I did have that ready-made Italian wiseguy look and all the tools that went with it. I wanted to use them again while I was still young enough—early middle age.
On top of that, my Sicilian nature did not like being forced out one little bit. I could not have that negative memory every time I looked at my souvenirs from my sixteen years of dedicated service to my country.
The sixteen weeks of New Agent Training amounted to a week for every year I had served from July 1969. The training included classes in the law, both criminal and intelligence gathering; classes in evidence collection, such as fingerprinting; classes in investigative techniques, such as undercover; and far too few classes in interviewing and interrogation.
There was also a lot of emphasis on physical training: running, push-ups, pullups, sit-ups, and all kinds of calisthenics and boxing. You had to qualify in a mile run every week, doing it under six-and-a-half minutes. And during untimed running, which was every day, you had to keep up with the Physical Training Instructor’s pace. Fortunately, I had always stayed in shape. For years I ran every day. I lifted weights.
Unfortunately, the second day of training I pulled a hamstring. More unfortunately, our PT instructor was an HRT, and this was his first class as an instructor.
An HRT is a Hostage Rescue Team agent, an
d all they do is train all day long in between missions. I had first run into the HRT shortly after I surfaced in 1981. It was at Quantico. They had a small gym in those days run by a terrific agent, Al Beccacio. Al would sit in a small room behind a glass window and come out if he saw someone using a technique that wasn’t quite right. Al was killed in the late 1990s in Bosnia in a helicopter crash.
There were a limited number of exercise benches and machines. In every gym I had ever been in, strangers took turns and shared the machines. I had worked out and done everything but my bench presses. There were two guys on the bench press, but they were just sitting next to it between reps. I brought my stuff over to the bench.
“What do you think you’re doing?” one of them asked me.
“I thought I’d take a turn on the bench,” I said.
“You can’t use the bench.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve got to work out.”
“So do I,” I said.
“We’re HRT.”
“I don’t know what that is. Are you guys agents?”
“We’re hostage rescue agents.”
“All right. I was on the first SWAT team in New York. We’re going to take turns like people do in a gym.”
“No we’re not,” he said loudly and stood up.
“I’m jumping in,” I said just as loudly. I took two 10-pound dumbbells off the rack to warm up.
“The hell you are,” he said.
Still louder I said, “If you don’t get out of my way right now, I’ll crack you with one of these.”
Al came running out from behind his window. “I think you better let him use the bench,” Al said. “Because he will hit you.”
The two HRT guys walked away and stayed away until I finished using the bench.
My next encounter with an HRT was this PT instructor who was none too sympathetic with my pulled hamstring. He kept criticizing me for not keeping up with the other runners and for seeing Jack the trainer to get the hammy wrapped. During the running exercises I lagged behind the men and jogged with the female new agents.
Every timed run saw me missing the mark by 40 to 45 seconds. The HRT complained to Assistant Director Tony Daniels that I shouldn’t be allowed to continue. Everybody told the guy to lighten up, but they were talking to a guy who worked out ten hours a day. Unless there was a hostage situation, that’s all these HRT guys did. Like a fireman keeping the fire engine in tune in between fires, this guy was obsessed with the physical training part of the job.
Tony Daniels made a point of coming to every timed run and cheering me on, which pissed the instructor off no end. Still, with a pulled hamstring that needs to be wrapped there is only so fast you can go. Jack the trainer was working with me and I was gutting it out, trying to pace myself so I could heal. It was humiliating enough without this guy breaking my balls. I had always been fast as a basketball player, with scholarship offers, and here my instructor was berating me while the Assistant Director cheered loudly.
One day we were out on one of the running exercises and the instructor had one of his HRT buddies running with us. The HRT guy kept running back to the females telling them to get a move on. I was at the back of the pack with the slowest of the females when this HRT guy ran back to me and said, “Come on you pussy, pick it up.”
“Did he say what I think he said?” I asked the nearest female.
“Yeah, he did,” she said and shook her head in disgust.
I ran up to him. I grabbed him by the shoulder. I turned him around.
We stopped and everybody stopped.
“I don’t know who the fuck you are,” I said. “You ever talk to me like that again, I’ll flatten you.”
“Excuse me?” he said.
“I’ll say it again,” I said. “You don’t know why I’m running back here. I don’t know who you are. Ever call me a pussy again, I’ll lay you out.”
He turned around like nothing happened and just started running to the front of the pack.
Nothing for nothing, but what probably scared the guy more than me was his use of the word “pussy.” Over the years, that had become a giant no-no. When I trained in 1969 they said anything and everything to us. They humiliated us and kicked our butts. They toughened us up. It was worse than any boot camp. Now with so many women going into the Bureau and the changing times, he would probably rather have taken a shot from me than have to deal with the fallout from his vocabulary.
Finally came the last timed run. As they all were, this one was at the end of a rigorous day. Tony Daniels was on the sidelines cheering me on. I had to make this last mile run under six and a half minutes or I was done.
I missed the run by ten seconds. The HRT instructor made no effort to conceal his pleasure when he announced my time.
“Let him do it again,” Tony Daniels said.
“I gave him every chance to qualify,” the instructor said. “What if he has to run in the street and people’s lives depend on it?”
“When do you want to run again, Joe?” Tony Daniels asked me, ignoring the instructor.
“I’ll do it in the morning,” I said.
“Sure you don’t need a couple more days for the hamstring?” Tony Daniels asked me.
“I’d rather get it over with,” I said. “I’ll rest up tonight.”
I met with the trainer early the next morning.
“Let’s try it without the wrap,” Jack said. “We’ll just keep you in the whirlpool.”
“You’re the boss, Jack,” I said.
Without the wrap putting a slight limp to my gait, I beat it by 35 seconds. Tony Daniels was as happy as I was. Retread, my ass.
SCOTLAND YARD
One day in 1994 I got a call from the Undercover Unit at Scotland Yard. I had worked with them in the past and they extended the courtesy of a direct call to me to see if I was interested before they called my superiors.
Scotland Yard was trying to find the location of a factory in Hong Kong that was making counterfeit American Express cards for the Triad. The Triad is Chinese organized crime. Unlike the American Mafia, which is composed of street guys, the Triad has businessmen, doctors, lawyers, politicians, and other professionals as members, in addition to street guys.
The Triad had a member on the inside at a high level at American Express who was stealing lists of cardholders and their card numbers. The idea was that a card in the name of a real person with that person’s real card number could be used for a month until the real person got his bill and saw $20,000 worth of charges he had never made. With 100 such cards, a wiseguy could bring home to his boss a minimum of $2,000,000 worth of merchandise, such as jewelry.
Two Scotland Yard undercovers, one of Italian descent and one of English descent, had penetrated the Triad in England as buyers of these cards. They were buying them piecemeal and could bust the sellers, but that would have gotten them no closer to the factory in Hong Kong, which was their objective. They explained that they wanted me to fly over and pose as a Mafia boss who was interested in buying large quantities of these cards. My objective would be to somehow, during negotiations for a large purchase, get someone in the Triad to reveal a general location of the factory.
I said okay and they called my superiors and made the arrangements.
I flew to London and was met by the two undercovers. We remained in character while in public right from the start. You never know who is watching. At my hotel they explained that I was their Mafia contact in the U.S. who had been backing their purchases. Because everything was working without a hitch on the card scam, I planned on upping the ante. But before I was willing to shell out bigger bucks for more cards, I wanted to meet face-to-face with the people higher up. I wanted to size them up personally. If I got a bad vibe the deal would be off. If I sized them up as solid and reliable, I would put the big money into the operation.
First, however, the two undercovers told me I had to meet with the sergeant in charge of Scotland Yard’s Serious Fraud Unit. This
was a joint operation between their Undercover and their Serious Fraud Unit.
“Do you have a Not-So-Serious Fraud Unit?” I asked.
I always found the English a pleasure to work with. They had more formalities than we do, but they all had terrific senses of humor and were very dedicated.
They arranged for Sergeant Johnson to meet with me in a safe location. He was in his mid forties, about my height, 6’ 1” or so and looked to be in excellent shape. His posture was military. As soon as we shook hands and met he began instructing me.
“These Triads are very keen on being respected. At all times in dealing with them you must pay them deference. Let them set the rules and do the talking. Always keep your tone of voice at a moderate level and keep a serious and respectful demeanor.”
At first I thought he was kidding. “You mean I can’t smack them around?”
He looked puzzled and said, “Be especially careful not to interrupt them. Sometimes they like to talk and they don’t like to be interrupted.”
“Look,” I said. “Don’t try to tell me how to do my job. I’m not telling you how to run your case. I don’t tell you how to move the papers around on your desk, so don’t try to tell me how to work undercover with criminals. That’s what you brought me over to do at no cost to the Metropolitan Police Department. I assume you brought me over because you trusted that I know how to handle myself.”
“Do you know my position in this case?” he said.
“I know who you are. But don’t tell me what to do; what I can’t do; how to act; how to not act.”
Sergeant Johnson was taken back. The two undercovers tried to conceal their smiles. He outranked them both.
“Very well,” the sergeant said. “I’m sure you’ll know what to do. As long as you know these are very important men you’ll be dealing with, if you get that far.”
