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History Uncensored
'We Absolutely Played a Part in JFK Death' History of The Mafia With Michael Franzese
01:35:36
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- [00:01]
Interviewer
Who were the first gangs of New York?
- [00:03]
Tyler Ambinder
The Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits. Most infamous neighborhood in the city.
- [00:09]
Interviewer
How deeply involved in American politics and assassinations was the Mafia?
- [00:15]
Michael Franzese
We absolutely played a part in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The deal was the Department of Justice was supposed to back off of us. Robert Kennedy did just the opposite. He came after us even harder.
- [00:29]
Ryan Gingeras
There were rumors that the Mafia had been approached by the CIA to kill Castro.
- [00:36]
Interviewer
And what did it feel like to watch your criminal empire crumble from the inside?
- [00:41]
Michael Franzese
I was totally committed to being the best possible mob guy I could be. Violate what you know about this life. Betray your brothers and you'll burn in hell like the saint is burning in your hands.
- [01:07]
Interviewer
If you stepped off a ship into New York in 1825, you would see no skyline, no steel, no Statue of Liberty. Just low brick buildings hugging the shoreline of Manhattan. Church spires, masts from dock, ships bristling like a forest. The air thick with unpleasant smells like sewage and rotting fish. Open drains running along dirt streets. Pigs wandering between carts and dock workers shouting in Irish, German and English. The city is small, but swelling fast. Immigrants are arriving in waves. Poor, young, unprotected, packed into boarding houses. There aren't enough police, there aren't enough jobs or housing. And when the state is weak, other forms of order begin to emerge. Let's find out exactly how that happened with historian and professor of 19th century America, Tyler Ambinder.
- [02:02]
Tyler Ambinder
Well, at the Beginning of the 19th century, New York City was a big city for the United States, but the United States was a very young, still very much kind of infantile country. New York City in 1800 had maybe 80,000 or so inhabitants. It did a lot of trade with Europe, but not much with the rest of the United States, actually, just because it was really difficult to get goods from the interior of the United States to New York City for transshipment to the rest of the world. That all begins to change in part with the end of the War of 1812 versus Great Britain. When that's settled peacefully, then New York merchants can feel like they can trade transatlantically with less fear of their goods being stolen by British naval ships. And then seeing that opportunity, New York's merchants and financiers decide to undertake what at that point was the biggest public works project probably in world history, which was the building of the Erie Canal, which would connect the Hudson river to the Great Lakes. And so that was a huge undertaking that takes place over the course of the late 18 teens and 18 twenties. But by the time that's done. You can then ship goods from the heartland of the United States, then really all the way from New York to Illinois, through New York grain and other goods, and get it to the rest of the world. And so New York grows tremendously because of that. But then added to that, you have the rise of mass immigration from Europe to the United States in this period, which kind of coincides with the finishing of the Erie Canal. And perhaps that's not coincidental because you need lots of immigrant laborers to build the canal and to build lots of other canals that will connect the Erie Canal to the Erie Canal and bring goods from other parts of the United States. But then by the 1840s, Americans discovered that, really, railroads are a much more efficient way of moving goods. And so immigrants are really important for building the United States railroad system. And. And so immigrants are attracted to the United States for those kinds of jobs. And manual labor jobs pay much better in the United States than they do in Europe. So you get huge numbers of immigrants coming to the United States. And then you have to top it all off, the great potato famine in Ireland that begins in 1845. And that sends, you know, in the course of just a couple of years, more than a million people fleeing Ireland heading to the United States. And most of them land in New York City. And most of them are too poor initially to go any place besides New York City. They have to stay at least a couple of years to earn some money if they even want to go someplace else. And so, as a result, New York's growth is exponential. And by 1860, this little parochial city of 80,000 had become a metropolis with a population of nearly 800,000 and was one of the great cities of the world by that point.
- [05:14]
Interviewer
What was Five Points? Why did it become infamous?
- [05:17]
Tyler Ambinder
So Five Points was the neighborhood that became most associated with Irish immigrants in New York. It was the most infamous neighborhood in the city. It was the most impoverished, it was the most disease ridden, it was the most crime ridden.
- [05:31]
Interviewer
Was Five Points, one of the locations where the first gangs start to emerge in New York.
- [05:38]
Tyler Ambinder
So it's not where the first gangs emerge, but it's where the first renowned gangs emerge, in the sense that there was always crime in New York, but it was. It was kind of scattered and diffuse. Five Points became so notorious for its poverty in a country that prided itself on having no poverty. Right? So imagine, you know, if we're talking 1825, in the United States, unlike Europe, there are no poor houses, there are no workhouses. There isn't that kind of scale of poverty. And so to have all this poverty in Five Points astounded people. And so it became a tourist attraction from almost the time it was built. And people would go to Five Points and tour it to see if it was really true that there was so much poverty in an American city. And so on those tours, and you would hire a policeman, an off duty or sometimes on duty policeman to give you a tour to make sure you stayed safe. And the policeman on the tour is to kind of, you know, make it seem interesting and dramatic. Would talk about, here's where the. Here's where these criminals hang out and here's where these other criminals have their lair and so forth. And so in that way. And then those tours started seeping into the press. And so for the first time, when Americans talk about having cross criminal gangs, they associate them with Five Points. Even though Five Points is definitely not the origin of criminal gangs in New York or even America.
- [07:20]
Interviewer
What were some of the most well known gangs that people would start to focus on in Five Points in this voyeuristic, touristy way?
- [07:30]
Tyler Ambinder
Well, they had names like the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits and the Wild and names of the story. The problem is these are names we get from the press. And this is a period where, unlike today, where there are fact checkers and so forth, you didn't have the same journalistic standards that you have today. You have lots of freelance writers who know that in order to sell their copy to a newspaper, it needs to be dramatic and it needs to be something that people want to read. And so there's lots and lots of embroidering of the facts to make things salacious and make it appeal to readers. And so what you have in this period, these gangs that I'm describing, whose names I'm mentioning, are not criminal gangs in the sense that we would later have. That just doesn't exist in Five Points or New York or really the United States in that period. You have criminals for sure, and sometimes those criminals work together. But the idea, you know, of organized crime that you'd have later with the. The Italian Mafia, for example, where you have, you know, hundreds of people working all over a city who are carrying out different jobs and different crimes and are only related in the sense that they all have to pay tribute to some ultimate boss of their hierarchy that doesn't exist in New York before, really, the large Italian immigration of the. Of the last 20 years of the 19th century.
- [09:16]
Interviewer
What is it about the last two decades of the 1800s and the waves of immigration, then that supercharges or professionalizes these sort of nascent criminal groupings.
- [09:30]
Tyler Ambinder
Everything in the United States is becoming a bigger business in that period, right? This is the period of the robber barons. And you know, so you look at American industry in, you know, the 1850s, and a really big manufacturing operation would employ 50 or 100 people. But by the 1880s, a really big manufacturing operation will employ. Employ 5,000 or more people. And so the scale of everything has gotten bigger in the United States. And crime is something that follows that pattern of getting bigger. And then Italian immigration is an important element in that. And one thing you have with Italian immigrants in New York is Italian immigrants don't speak English like most of the previous big immigrant groups, the English, the Scots, the Irish. And so when the Italians get to America in large numbers, they're looking for the same day labor jobs that the Irish had had before on construction sites. But they can't understand what a foreman is going to tell them. And so they have an intermediary who's known as a padrone. And that term originally was a term used for labor contractors. So that's an earlier Italian immigrant who had probably done the same kind of day labor, but has learned enough English that he can now go in and hire other new immigrants and then go to a construction site and go to a foreman and say, I've got these 10 laborers, you need labor, you pay me, I'll pay them, I'll tell them what to do. And so that padrone would then take the immigrants pay, take a large cut of it, because these immigrants are very dependent on the padrone, and then pay a little bit out to the laborers. And so you have in the Italian immigrant community this system of these kind of overlords, which is a way you might think of the padrone as, you know, just as. As the Italian society that these southern Italians had come from was in very, you know, a lot of ways kind of semi feudal, that kind of comes over to the United States in which these immigrants have to pay this big fee in order to get a job, just like they might have to do in Italy to work for the large landowner in Italy of the area. And here instead, you work for the large labor contractor. I think there's some connection there. This idea that you owe some fealty to this person, you are financially dependent on this person, you have to pay tribute to this person in order to keep your job. And I think that then rolls over to organized crime and allows you to get these much larger organized crime groups than you had had previously.
- [12:29]
Interviewer
When you look at the police records from those periods. So we're talking the later 1800s now, is the frequency and scale of violence increasing? Are there new reports of emerging protection rackets or different types of intimidation?
- [12:45]
Tyler Ambinder
So I would say violence, no protection, definitely. And so that becomes one of the early ways in which Italian organized crime operates in terms of demanding protection money. Now, the Italians weren't the first to have that in New York. You had had that previously, for instance, with American policemen. And so if you're a saloon keeper in New York in that period, you need some political patron to be able to operate. And so some saloon keepers have enough political clout that they don't need to pay money to the police to stay open, perhaps past the legal hours to stay open on Sunday, which was illegal. But if you are a saloon keeper who lacked that clout, then you were going to have to pay bribes to the police in order to stay open late, to open early, to stay open on Sunday. And then that kind of protection racket then spreads to the city more generally. But first, however, almost entirely Italian neighborhoods. So. So the Italian organized crime is only demanding protection money from Italian immigrant businessmen. And then you'll have, in Jewish neighborhoods in New York, like the Lower east side, you have Jewish organized crime demanding protection money from Jewish merchants. But then the. The Mafia kind of grows the scale of that and makes it more of a citywide thing eventually.
- [14:25]
Interviewer
Tell me about Tammany hall and its connection to these early gangs.
- [14:29]
Tyler Ambinder
Tammany hall is the name for the political organization that controls the Democratic party in New York City starting in the early 19th century. What happens is that as early as the 1830s, when you went to vote in New York, in those days and in the whole United States, you didn't have a secret ballot like you have today. You didn't go into a polling place in a neutral location, go into a booth with curtains so nobody could see what you're doing and choose your candidates and vote that way. In order to prevent people from voting illegally, they thought the best thing to do was to have open voting where everybody could see. Well, not exactly. It wasn't intended that everyone could see. But what they did have was glass bowls. So what you did in those days is you took a piece of paper, you wrote on it the names of the people you wanted to vote for, and you put the piece of paper into the glass bowl. And part of the reason for the glass bowl was to make sure you only put one piece of paper into the bowl. But what the party started doing was because the parties wanted to know who people were voting for. Because if you're a saloon keeper and you want a liquor license from the Democratic alderman, the alderman is going to look more favorably if the alderman knows you voted for him in the previous election. And so what the parties start doing is rather than having you write it out by hand, they pre print the ballot with all the Democratic candidates and all the Republican candidates. The Republicans will hand out their ballot outside the polling place, the Democrats hand out theirs to make it so you can tell who someone is voting for. The Democrats might put it on blue paper, the Republicans might put it on red paper. The politicians come up with the idea, why don't we get some rough looking guys to stand outside the polling place and if they're carrying the blue ballot, the ruffians let them in. If they're carrying the red ballot, though, the ruffians go up to them and say, you really don't want to vote here, or something violent is going to happen to you and scare your opponents away. Of course, if the Democrats hire five guys to stand up the polls and do that, if the Republicans want any of their voters to vote, the Republicans are going to hire five more guys to stand outside the polls too. And eventually those five guys may say, all right, I better bring in reinforcements. And they bring more, and they bring more, and then you get enough people and then they start fighting. But the way Tammany hall really ends up with criminalizing voting is more later on when someone like Boss Tweed will say, you know, having all this violence at the polls is very bad publicity. Instead, I'm going to hire people to vote more than once. So they'll go and round up people who will agree to vote five times in a single day instead of the one allowed time. Those people are much more likely to have a criminal background because, you know, it's clearly against the law to vote five times. And so you got to find people who are used to breaking the law to find people who are willing to do that. And, and it's in that way, really, in the 1860s and 70s with Boss Tweed, that you end up with more criminality and fraud in, in the political process.
- [17:39]
Interviewer
In the early 1900s, newspapers contain these stories about this shadowy conspiracy of the Black Hand, or Manonira. Now you've dug into this. What happened with that? What's the real truth? Was there some shady criminal conspiracy of Italians at that point, or was this just media scaremongering?
- [18:02]
Tyler Ambinder
I mean, it's really hard to tell. The Black Hand becomes a big media sensation because people who it is believed are going to give evidence at trials against these Italian criminals are sent these threatening notes with black hands written on the notes saying that, you know, we're watching you and, and if you squeal on us, you know, you'll be you or someone in your family will be killed. And one of the important things to understand is that, you know, in, in ear. In the late 19th and very early 20th century, Italian immigrants aren't tending to kind of group together helter skelter. The Sicilians stick with the Sicilians, the Calabrians stick with the Calabrians, the Neapolitans stick with the Neapolitans. And they don't do anything together and especially not crime because they don't trust each other. And so you have, and each groups from each of those places and the other places I haven't even named have their own names for their criminal organizations. I think one of the, one of the things worth noting, if not from me, then one of your other guests, is that lots of Italian immigrants join the police force and fight Italian organized crime. And some of the best evidence we have about early Italian organized crime is from these Italian American policemen who did the detective work both in New York, in other parts of the United States and then went to Italy. The most famous of them went to Italy and gets killed in Italy while investigating the Italian roots of New York organized crime. And so, but again, that's a story I just don't know very well.
- [20:00]
Interviewer
And also that's something I can dig into and include and I think that's a really interesting, that's a fascinating point which I hadn't considered. I did do some digging and now I can tell you the story of the rise and assassination of a man known as the Italian. Italian Sherlock Holmes. On the night of March 12, 1909 in Palermo, Sicily, a New York detective walked out of his hotel and went to dinner. Joseph Petrosino. He ordered pasta marinara sauce, fish, fried potatoes, cheese, peppers and fruit. He drank wine and paid his bill. Moments later, as he crossed the nearly deserted Piazza Marina, two men stepped out of the shadows and fired four shots. Three bullets hit him and he fell to the pavement and died. Petrosino was 48 years old, a New York police lieutenant, actually one of the most famous detectives in the world. He'd built his career fighting organised crime in the period that we've just been talking about and he died hunting it. Joseph Petrosino was born giuseppe Petrosino in 1860 in Pedula, Italy. At 13, he came to New York and he grew up in what would become Little Italy. He learned English at 5ft 3 inches tall, he didn't even meet the NYPD's height requirement. But at 23 years old, he joined the force. He was one of the first Italian American officers in a department that was dominated by Irish Americans. In Little Italy, many saw him as a traitor for wearing the uniform. He received threats enough that he had to move homes, but he gained a reputation. Tough, incorruptible. In 1895, Theodore Roosevelt, then chairman of the New York Board of Police Commissioners, promoted Petrosino to detective sergeant and put him in charge of tackling crime in Italian neighbourhoods. You see, our first. The NYPD was kind of indifferent to the issue of Italians hurting other Italians. But Petrosino had campaigned for an Italian squad to take down these networks that were spreading their tentacles across the city. He wore disguises to infiltrate criminal enterprises. He memorised faces and names instead of keeping files, hence the press calling him the Italian Sherlock Holmes. And his main enemy was the mysterious Black Hand, this shadowy group of extortionists who sent letters decorated with daggers and black crosses, threatening to kidnap children, blow up homes or kill unless the money was paid. They arrested hundreds of these Black Handers, but the problem did not go away. So in 1909, Petrosino made a fateful decision. A new federal law allowed for the deportation of immigrants who had criminal convictions back in their home countries. Petrosino planned to travel to Italy, collect prison records, and then cut off the pipeline of organised criminals entering the United States. It was meant to be a secret mission, obviously, but it wasn't. The New York Times reported on his possible departure. And in Italy, Petrosino was recognised almost immediately. We know that he knew the risk because he studied these guys more than anyone. And before leaving, he signed over power of attorney to his wife, Adelina, in case he didn't return. On March 12, 1909, he was supposed to meet an informant in Palermo, but instead he was executed. The murder shocked New York. More than 200,000 people joined his funeral procession and the city declared the day a holiday. 140 suspects were rounded up, arrests were made, alibis produced. No one was convicted. And the war he fought didn't end with him. In fact, it was only just starting. Petrosino and the NYPD knew that the Mafia was getting stronger and smarter. Decades later, the authorities would uncover the precise structure underpinning it. The American Mafia, La cosa Nostra, which means this thing of ours, operated like a hierarchical organization with a chain of command designed to generate income, enforce discipline and insulate leadership from law enforcement. In New York, organised crime was dominated by five Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese. Each had its own hierarchy. At the top is the boss, also known as the Don or padrone. As Tyler was saying, the boss has final authority. They got a cut of every operation and often acted like a dictator, rarely giving orders directly, though instructions filter down through the ranks. Below the boss is the administration, made up of the second in command, the underboss, often running day to day operations, and frequently the acting boss, if the boss or the Don is in jail. And the consigliere, a trusted advisor, sometimes mediator, often a third ranking figure who would handle disputes and sensitive relationships. Consigliere is an old term. In Italy, especially in cities like Venice, a consigliere served as an advisor to the doge from the 12th century. Then, below the administration, we've got the capos. Each capo ran a crew. The number of guys in a crew did vary, but a typical crew might be 10 to 20 plus more associates. Capos take a percentage from their crew and then they pass a cut upwards. And they might have control of key rackets. Under them there is the workforce. Soldiers or made men who are inducted members. They take the oath of silence. In some families we understand that candidates had to commit murder. Supposedly, once made, you're untouchable and to be killed requires permission from the boss and retaliation for that is expected. And there are associates who work with or for the family, but they're not members. They can do anything from serious criminal work to maybe acting as go betweens, handling tasks meant to keep the heat oft made members. For a long time, non Italians generally remained associates, but some did become highly influential. This hierarchy wasn't just tradition, it was risk management, so that the leaders didn't touch the crimes directly. Orders and money flow through the layers, so that if lower level people get arrested, higher ups can claim distance. Plausible deniability. I spoke to Ryan Gingeras, who's the author of a brand new book, A Global History, to find out how these street gangs became became structured like this and transformed into national syndicates.
- [26:57]
Ryan Gingeras
When we talk about New York and the Mafia, it is a subject that is both important in terms of actual events, in terms of the makings of kind of politics, the politics of crime, drugs, all these kinds of things, but also in terms of the ways in which people view The New York culturally, I mean, and this is something that was very much cemented with the movies, most notably, you know, with the Godfather. You know, you can't divorce what New York is in terms of its, its reputation, and it's in the way people perceive it. Without thinking about the degree to which this movie, in addition, obviously to many others, have shaped the way people see it.
- [27:48]
Interviewer
Which were the most profound ways that the Mafia shaped American politics in the 20th century.
- [27:55]
Ryan Gingeras
I think we have to think about it first and foremost of mafias being emblematic of obviously crime. And crime in American life has grown ever more important as a political subject, also as a social subject. American cities progressively over the 20th century grew more unsafe and it became an ever more important subject for the, you know, for presidents, to the point that it defines presidencies. And if we look specifically at the issues of the Mafia, Mafias figure pretty prominently in, say, the Nixon administration or the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration, even the Clinton administration, insofar as Clinton, in looking at the world after the Cold War, made it very clear that the things that disturbed the global order in the late 20th and as he saw it going into the 21st century, were ostensibly mafias. Mafias, as the Clinton administration portrayed it, was the thing that in some ways threatened the integrity of political systems. It threatened the economy. It was a source of concern when it came to human rights, for example, in terms of trafficking in people and so on. So in that respect, you know, mafias have been a really significant political issue because of the issue of crime. Now, if you could go well beyond that and other directions too, it is in terms of political, in terms of the politics of it, I'd say, you know, and this derives in some ways from crime is migration. You can't talk about not just mafias of the past, but those very much of our more recent past and present as being the product of diasporas. Diasporas are often the thing that helped bring mafias to new places, meaning that large people pick up, come and settle, and among the people that come are people who are connected to some sort of, you know, criminal subculture or criminal organization of some kind.
- [30:23]
Interviewer
When did the American Mafia stop being a New York phenomenon? When did it start to spread to other cities in the United States and beyond?
- [30:32]
Ryan Gingeras
Well, I mean, there are precursors before the 1920s. I mean, we do see, for example, in again, the late 1800s, early 20th century, before the First World War, individuals or groups of individuals who identified themselves or were identified as so called black hands, and these were gangsters. Who were by and large extortionists. And the people that they tended to extort were other newly arrived Italian immigrants. And that was everywhere, right? Almost everywhere where you found Italian immigrants, not just New York. They were present in the smallest of towns in the Midwest. Now, in terms of the real question being is how did the organization of the Mafia as we tend to understand it as being families, as it being an Internet connected web of different syndicates from coast to coast? When did that come about? That comes about during the, during the Prohibition era. During the Prohibition era, it's clear that a younger generation of gangster drew upon, on the one hand, longer histories of urban gangs in places like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and so on, and melded it with elements of the mafia subculture or the Mafia as an organization in Sicily, and then recognized the existence of established families or gangs, not just in New York, but in other parts of the United States. Some of these are people who were migrated from New York. I mean, a good example of this is somebody like Capone. Capone's from New York, but, you know, he, he moved to Chicago, you know, as a young man, and basically joined up with people who were already there, some of them from New York, some of them not.
- [32:30]
Interviewer
So Prohibition clearly was transformative when we look at the mafia in the U.S. and so we're talking from 1920 to 1933 when these groups really start to professionalize, as you've been saying. But what does that look like specifically? Specifically, what changes structurally, what changes in the way that they conduct their activities?
- [32:50]
Ryan Gingeras
Some individuals who are not necessarily members of de facto organizations, but people who were long standard standing, let's say, peoples of note within different underworlds in Detroit and New York, maybe the most famous of which being Arnold Rothstein, the famous gambler in New York City. He bankrolled a huge shipment of alcohol for distribution in New York. And so that kicked off an entirely new business model, at least in terms of how people thought about the organization and the modus vivendi of what does it mean to be in a life of crime? Because you had a bottomless, insatiable appetite for alcohol from coast to coast and ample opportunity to try to distribute it, especially in cities and in states where politicians were not necessarily pro prohibition. Right. There were large segments of the United States, so called wet counties or wet states where local law enforcement didn't actively pursue this kind of, you know, this federal legislation. You know, the prosecution or the, didn't aid in the prosecution of this legislation. So, you know, that, that was really the what was what happened overnight? And it organized the development of gangs and networks of gangs derived from that
- [34:28]
Interviewer
industry zipping back in time again, if I may, for our viewers that don't know what triggered. And what was the Castellammarese War? What was the impact?
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Ryan Gingeras
Sure, yeah.
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Interviewer
Quickly, if you could.
- [34:42]
Ryan Gingeras
Yeah, no, no, of course, the Castellammarese War was a war that broke out in the late 20s. And we don't know exactly when, we don't know exactly how or why, but likely there is a sort of concluding moment in the early 30s when two of the bigger bosses in New York, people well known to kind of be the most leading figures in the New York underworld, they're murdered. There's a lot of academic debate over whether there was an actual war or not, how many people were killed. And even in terms of the result of it, there's some degree of debate. What's very clear is that the gangsters who come to define the making of the canonical five families of New York trace their origins to this semi mythic war. That it came about as a compromise among the successors to these two original prominent gangsters, and that it represented the emergence of this emerging generation, people that would include people like Lucky Luciano and others.
- [36:04]
Interviewer
And why did those specific five families emerge, if you could take us through them?
- [36:09]
Ryan Gingeras
Well, first of all, they represented powerful people who had profited, come to the fore during Prohibition. And the principal. Well, what is. Who is often sort of pointed to is the architect of the. Let's just say the, the layout, the lay of the land, have the identification of five distinct families. That was Salvatore Luciano, or better known as. As. As Lucky Luciano. He's. He is the one who supposedly came up with the idea of reorganizing and that the people who had come to the fore, people like Vito Genovese or Joe Bonanno, these were individuals who were well established in the New York underworld and they were recognized on the basis of their local influence. It also is representative of the fact that Luciano in particular was someone who had come to be a rather known commodity in prohibition, as well as prostitution in the drug trade in and beyond New York. So that endowed him with a certain degree of gravitas that others lacked. And so that was that. Again, this is at least a part of the mythology around it. The truth is, we don't really know, you know, Joe Bonanno, who was one of the founders of this, you know, this, this arrangement of five families. He actually wrote an autobiography that was Release in the late 1970s, which is a really weird read in that he's essentially copying to a great deal of crime, but also being somewhat coy about it and saying that, no, these weren't gangs, these were honored societies and whatnot. But it's also clear that he's. It's, you know, that the. The version of history that he wants to sell is aimed at people that he was critical of, probably dating back to the time.
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Interviewer
Speaking of Lucky Luciano, what was Operation Underworld? What really happened?
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Ryan Gingeras
What really happened in Operation Underworld?
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Interviewer
We should also tell the audience. So we're talking about whether or not the Maffia Luciano helped the U.S. government during World War II around an Allied invasion of Sicily.
- [38:30]
Ryan Gingeras
The origins of it supposedly centers on the possibility of sabotage on the New York docks, and that it came as a result of a member of Naval Intelligence seeking out Luciano's help, since he at that time was actually in prison, but was seen as somebody of great import in the New York underworld, especially on the docks. The fact of the matter is, in terms of the kind of impact that they had, it's probably pretty minimal. What's more important is in terms of it being, I think, seen as a kind of original sin within American political lore when it comes to the issue of the US Government's relationship with the American Mafia, that it derived from this important moment in World War II and somehow grew more expansive and more insidious over time, perhaps being most associated in terms of its supposed culmination with the attempted assassination of Castro by elements of the Mafia as encouraged by the CIA.
- [39:45]
Interviewer
Where do you land on the extent of involvement or knowledge that the Mafia had about JFK's assassination?
- [39:52]
Ryan Gingeras
Like my confidence in actual their involvement in it? Zero. But I think. I mean, look, the actual evidence of anybody's participation in the assassination, other than Oswald doesn't exist. What's really most important around the Mafia in relationship to the Kennedy assassination is that the growth of doubt regarding the conclusions of the Warren Commission coincides with other issues, broadly speaking, in American society that began to really erode public confidence in government. And one of the things that comes to the fore in the wake of Kennedy is the idea that, number one, there were rumors well before the 1970s that the mafia had been approached by the CIA to kill Castro. Not only that, already there were rumors of the Mafia's involvement, for example, in the 1960 election, you know, tipping it in favor for Kennedy. And so there were already these sorts of stories that were generally, you know, had. Had yet to be, you know, in the case of, let's say, the CIA you know, Mafia relationship that did happen. It was a rather fleeting relationship. It didn't really go anywhere. At least it didn't, certainly wasn't successful. But by the time it really becomes full throated and articulated in American society in the early to mid-70s, you're talking about the wake of Watergate, the wake of Vietnam, especially after Tet, the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. All these things really combining into, I think, a pretty fertile field, if you will, for these kinds of suspicions to germinate.
- [42:06]
Interviewer
When was the American Mafia in terms of power influence, international operations at its peak?
- [42:14]
Ryan Gingeras
You know, I think one thing that really clouds our memory of the Mafia in the US are the sort of nostalgic films that we associate with them. I would say specifically Scorsese's movies, you know, the late 80s and 90s, Goodfellas and Casino. If you watch these movies in terms of their narrative arc about when the good times were and when things went bad, they generally tell this story of the 60s going into the 70s was the kind of when things peaked. And then by the time we got to the 80s, things started to drop off. Now here's my, here's my attitude about this. I think this generally reflects a broader American consensus about the general strength and vitality of the United States as a whole. You know, there is a very famous moment in 1978 where Jimmy Carter gives this speech on television, the famous American malaise speech, which a word he does not mention in the speech, but nonetheless the object of the speech was to emphasize the idea that people had lost, were beginning to lose faith in where America was going and that people were looking back more and more as, and saying that the good times are now behind us and things are generally on the downward slope. And I do wonder if from the perspective of, you know, gangsters themselves, whether they actually saw things that way. I would venture to say that in some cases in the 1960s, the vitality of the Mafia was really beginning to wane in different parts of the country. Even before things like the prosecutions under the RICO act, beginning in the late 70s, certainly before, let's say, the cocaine explosion of the early 1980s. There are some signs of, of real weakness. Now, did people necessarily recognize that as a moment of real weakness? I don't know.
- [44:31]
Interviewer
What was it about the five families that rendered them incapable of adapting sufficiently because they really hollowed out.
- [44:40]
Ryan Gingeras
Well, let me take your first part on. Did they adapt? They did adapt. They did adapt, but they. The. One of the challenges, I mean, I Think the challenges were multiple.
- [44:50]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [44:51]
Ryan Gingeras
Number one, we already see going into, say, the 70s and 80s, a serious turnover in terms of leadership, generational leadership. You know, by this point in time, we're talking about people who are becoming prominent in Mafia circles who had no memory of Prohibition. They didn't speak Italian. Their concept of the Mafia, in many ways more and more and more was coming from what they read in the paper, what they saw on television, as opposed to, say, something that came from personal family tradition. I think that in itself began to wear at the integrity of the Mafia as it was originally conceived, but it wasn't necessarily terminal in that respect. The economy of crime was changing through the 70s and 80s. Drugs was becoming more important, gambling less and less. So as a force. Politically, it was declining with the decline of the Democratic Party, demographically, New York was changing quite a bit. People were picking up and moving out of kind of the historic cores of where the Mafia is from places like Red Hook or places like Little Italy or Harlem or Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Those neighborhoods were beginning those. In some ways, those neighborhoods were anchors, right? Because it's where people had their families. It's where people associated themselves in terms of their. Let's say, their community. Where do they move? They move to the suburbs. Right. In some ways, you know, Tony Soprano, as he's imagined in the late 1990s, is. Is conceived in this time. Right. And I think that also wears that. The integrity of the Mafia, as it becomes more diffused away from it being something that grew out of a physical community and more and more of a community of people that shared more or less the same profession. And then, last but not least, it's clear that federal law enforcement beginning in the late 1970s, really begins to come down hard on the, you know, on. On criminals, right, involved in organized crime in the United States, most notably the Mafias of the United States. And they do it, you know, in a way that up until that point had been relatively novel with, you know, through wiretaps. And on top of that, you know, the. The penalties that gangsters were facing beginning in the late 70s and early 80s under the RICO act, under increased penalties for drug trafficking. That really begins to break people down.
- [47:41]
Interviewer
Let's take a look at moments that made and broke the Mafia. Prohibition didn't just create bootleggers. Between 1920 and 1933, it transformed neighborhood thugs into criminal corporations. Al Capone built a vertically integrated empire. Supply chains, distribution networks, enforcement armies funded by illegal booze. When he finally went down in 1931, it wasn't for murder, it was for tax evasion. As the Fed's strategy to dismantle these operations was starting to get more creative. November 14, 1957. Police raid a mansion in Appalachian New York. Inside around 60 mafia bosses from across the country are arrested mid summit. The COVID story that local gangs were operating independently died that day. This was incontrovertibly a national organisation with structure, hierarchy and rules. Joseph Valachi, a mobster from the Genovese crime family, did the unthinkable. He talked live on TV before the US Senate. He laid it out. The hierarchy, the rituals, the blood oaths, the commission that ran everything. And he gave it a name, La Cosa Nostra, this thing of ours. For the first time, Americans saw into the machine. 1970. Congress passes RICO, the racketeer influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act. This was a breakthrough for law enforcement because it meant that you could prosecute the boss for crimes committed by anyone in the organisation. By the mid-80s, prosecutor Rudy Giuliani wielded it like a sledgehammer. The commission trial took down the heads of all five families at once. John Gotti became Gambino boss in 1986 and broke pretty much every rule. Expensive suits, media interviews. Nicknamed Dapper Don for loving the spotlight, the Mafia had survived in part by staying in the shadows. Gotti made himself a celebrity and a massive target. 1991. Gotti's underboss Sammy the Bull Gravano flips. He testifies 19 murders, racketeering. He buries Gotti and dozens of others. That oath of a murder, the code of silence had held for generations. Under RICO pressure and lengthening life sentences, it started to shatter. Next I spoke to Michael Franzese. He was a made member and later captain in the Colombo family. Son of former underboss Sonny Franzese, Michael was described by federal prosecutors as one of the most powerful Mafia earners of his generation. He experienced the peak of the empire that I've just described and the federal assault that brought it down. So Michael, when you were a young boy, when do you remember first realizing that your family was different to other families?
- [50:40]
Michael Franzese
You know, it's an experience that has never left me. I was probably maybe four or five years old and we had lived in Brooklyn, New York at that time. And for some reason my father had moved us out to my grandparents home in Long Island. And then he was gone for a couple of days. He hadn't been around. And then one morning he appeared. He came into the house, my grandparents house. He was unshaven, he hadn't shaved In a while. And he had a very close associate of his who was out on the porch. And I can see through the window, he was kind of like pacing back and forth. And my dad came in and he hugged my mom and he was talking to my mom for a little bit, and I was sitting on the stairway. And then he came over to me and he hugged me and asked me how was doing and all of that. And then he disappeared again and he was gone for a couple of days. And it was kind of strange to me. I remember sitting on that step, seeing him and wondering why my dad wasn't around. Well, I later found out is that that was the first Gallopsi war that my father was involved in. It was a war within the family. And so from that time, even as a young boy, I started to observe my father and the friends that were around him. And it kind of. I didn't really understand what it was about until I got a little bit older. But I knew at that point, you know, there was something different with our family.
- [52:14]
Interviewer
And when you got a little bit older and you were first introduced to the notion of the Mafia, what did you understand about it?
- [52:22]
Michael Franzese
Well, you know, for me, it was fairly easy because my father was such a high profile media figure that he was always in the media, always in the newspaper. We always had law enforcement around us. So I would read things. My dad never sat me down and told me, you know, what the life was all about. But I would read about it and other people would tell me. So I started to understand that it was a, you know, criminal organization. I would say, just from what I read about my dad, even though I didn't want to believe a lot of it, because my dad was my hero. I love my dad. And, you know, he had told me early on in life, he said, michael, you can never be a police officer because, you know, they take an oath to lock up their own parents if their parents were to do something wrong. And we could never do something like that. So he kind of instilled that in me at a young age. So I always looked at law enforcement as the enemy, trying to hurt my dad, trying to hurt my family. That's the kind of atmosphere that I grew up in.
- [53:26]
Interviewer
And when your father was sent to prison, that's when, if I understand correctly, you decided to get involved in the life properly because you wanted to get him out. And you saw law enforcement in this way at that point. What do you remember, guys around you or your father telling you about the history of the Mafia?
- [53:47]
Michael Franzese
Well, you know, I knew about it. You know, my dad told me how people came over here from Italy in the early 1900s and how they, you know, came through Rikers island. And then. I mean, I'm sorry, through Ellis Island. Rikers island is a jail. Through Ellis Island. And many of them came to New York and, you know, took up home there. And, you know, I started to learn about the life myself. And I started to realize that, you know, when Prohibition came in, it was a law here. That's when the mob or the Mafia really started to grow because they realized that people wanted to be able to drink alcohol, and they filled that void, and that's when they started to become stronger and more of an organization. So it was in the 20s and early 30s that that happened. So, you know, I started to understand that. But I still had the belief that the Mafia was good, that they were good people and that it was a brotherhood. And there was something that my father was a part of, and there was honor and, you know, trust involved in it. So I always looked at it as a good organization and not something that
- [54:58]
Interviewer
was bad at that point. Was it that you weren't quite aware yet of how violent it was, or was it that there was a rationale for the violence in your mind?
- [55:09]
Michael Franzese
Yeah, I mean, I really got my first taste of it when Joe Colombo, who was the boss of our family, my dad had been in prison, organized the Italian American Civil Rights League. And the reason he did that was because basically his son had been arrested on a charge that he said was a bad charge and that Italian Americans were being hurt, harassed, because of a vowel at the end of our name. So I was very active in that organization because I saw it as a way to help my father get out of prison. And then in the second rally that we had, we had a huge rally at Columbus circle, was about 50,000 people there. And that's the day that Joe Colombo got shot. And I was there that day. I was about 12 steps away from him when the shots rang out. So that was my first real understanding that, you know, things like this happen. I had one other prior experience where a very close friend of my dad was brutally murdered. And he was a very close friend of mine and my family. And it was. That was about a year before this. This happened with Joe Colombo. So I started to understand that, you know, this life can be pretty brutal. But there, again, I thought it was justified. I said, you know. You know, the saying that, hey, we only kill our own, and if people violate the rules, they know the rules. And you could pay with your life because there's a lot of honor involved. And if you dishonor the life, you can pay with your life. So I always looked at it, again early on as an honorable thing.
- [56:39]
Interviewer
And speaking of Joe Colombo and the Colombo family that you were part of, what were you told about who founded it or the origins and why it rose to be prominence and became important?
- [56:51]
Michael Franzese
Well, I understood that when Lucky Luciano got on the scene and he kind of settled the wars with Mazaria and Maranzano, that he tried to make the Mafia more of an organized kind of a business operation. And the five families had been divided up at that point, but he created the Commission. So I understood that this was an organization. And so it was really from that time, you know, my dad had told me a lot. And I had met Carlo Gambino with my dad when I was younger, and I knew he was the boss of, obviously, his family, the Gambino family. So I started to understand the way the families were divided and what the purpose was early on in my life. I met Carlo probably when I was about 11, 12 years old. My dad took me to see him at his home in Massachusetts. And, you know, you got the sense of what was going on just from the people that were there, the men that were there, the respect that Carlo Gambino was given. So I had a good sense of it, you know, from early on in
- [57:56]
Tyler Ambinder
my life
- [57:58]
Interviewer
and from those early days, right up until the peak of your career within the Mafia, when you would see your associates or family, friends and people that you knew depicted in the media versus the people that you had come to know, was there a big difference in your mind? Did you feel like they were being unfairly represented or fairly represented?
- [58:22]
Michael Franzese
No, I thought it was unfairly because they were, you know, uncles to me. I mean, a lot of the guys that were made, guys that had taken the oath, they were around my dad, and I grew up with them. And they were kind of, you know, Uncle Tony, Uncle Carmine, uncle, you know, so they were like family members practically. So I didn't see him in that light until later on. I really started to get a good sense of that during the Italian American Civil Rights League, because I was picketing the FBI building along with a lot of the guys. And so we had a lot more conversation. They opened up to me a lot more. As a matter of fact, it was on that line when people said to me, michael, your father's going to die in prison if you don't help him out. Because Your dad was framed. And I believe my dad was framed until this moment. And so I said, you know, I can't go to school. I got to help my dad, who's going to die in prison. And so they started to open up a lot more to me about things, and I started to get a better sense of the inner working of the life. During that time,
- [59:25]
Interviewer
you established good relationships with members from other families as well, didn't you?
- [59:30]
Tyler Ambinder
How.
- [59:30]
Interviewer
How unusual was that at the time, or difficult to do?
- [59:34]
Michael Franzese
Well, it wasn't unusual. You know, I was fortunate in that I was one of the guys that was earning a lot of money. And I learned early on I was one of the younger guys. Very young, as a matter of fact. And I understand there could be a lot of resentment in that life because there were guys that were there a lot longer than me may not been doing as well as me. So I always try to give them even a little bit more courtesy and treat them with even more respect. Even though at times when I became a captain, I outranked these guys, they were actually under me. But I always gave them an extra added bit of respect to show them that, you know, I understood that they were around a lot longer than me, and, you know, I respected them for that. So I tried to make friends now, not enemies in that life. And it worked in my favor, you know, for even until today, because I honestly believe that I had more friends than enemies in that life. And had I had more enemies than friends, if people really had it in for me, I probably wouldn't be here right now, because they would have come after me, you know, a lot harder than they did.
- [60:39]
Tyler Ambinder
That.
- [60:40]
Interviewer
That discrepancy in age and opportunity that you had just described describing is really there from the very beginning of your mafia career, isn't it? Because when you were made, you were made alongside guys that had been waiting to be made for all of these years because they'd closed the books. Could you tell me a little bit about that initiation ceremony and what you understood that the parts of the ritual meant? Like, what did it symbolize to you?
- [61:05]
Michael Franzese
Yeah, well, my. You know, I was made in 1975, actually. Just celebrated, I would say, 50 years from the night I was made. It was October 31, 1975. And, you know, I mean, I was exhilarated that night. It was a tremendous feeling. I was a recruit for about two and a half years prior to that. So I had to prove myself, you know, worthy to become a member. And when I got in, it was very exciting. I Felt, hey, I was, you know, part of a brotherhood that my dad was part of. There was even more of a tight relationship now between us. I was entering a life of honor and respect, and it was exhilarating. And, you know, I took that oath very seriously. It was a very solemn ceremony. I mean, they wanted you to understand the seriousness of what you were getting involved in. This was a lifetime commitment. There was no exit. We took an oath of omerte, meaning, you know, a lot of people think that that oath means that you're taking an oath to lie, steal, and kill. It's not that at all. It's an oath of silence. You're not even supposed to admit that the life exists, ever. You're not supposed to, obviously, betray it in any way or betray any of the members. So I understood it to be that that night. And, you know, I was totally committed to being the best possible mob guy I could be. I mean, that's what it meant to me.
- [62:32]
Interviewer
What else happened in the ceremony, the burning of the saint? Anything else that symbolized the step that you were taking?
- [62:40]
Michael Franzese
Well, yeah, they took a knife and a pen and actually pricked my finger and slid the knife over it. So they drew some blood. The blood dropped on the floor. Then they took a picture of a saint. It was a Catholic altar card, and put it on my hands and lit it aflame. And it burned quickly. It didn't hurt. It was merely symbolic. And he said, tonight, Michael Francis, you are born again into a new life, into Cosa Nostra. Violate what you know about this life, betray your brothers, and you'll die and burn in hell like the saint is burning in your hands. And he said, do you accept? And I said, yes, I do. And that's it. It's a very quick ritual, but it's very foreboding. You understood what you were getting involved in at that moment. And it's a night I'll never forget.
- [63:29]
Interviewer
And you mentioned that part of a murder is to never admit that the life even exists. And I remember hearing you say before that you were interviewed when you were in prison, and you did what you thought you were supposed to do, which is to not really talk about the life at all, or to say that you were, you know, you were leaving and you wanted nothing to do with it. Do you remember the first time that you did publicly admit that the life existed?
- [63:56]
Michael Franzese
Yeah, it was when I got out of prison, and I was really, totally committed to walking away, you know, and I don't remember the exact year. I think it was in 90, maybe mid-90s, 95, when I finally said, you know, yeah, that's it. And I'll admit that the life exists. You know, I actually talked to the government about things that I had done. You know, the government had put a lot of pressure on me. They wanted me to become a major witness, because when I did walk away, there was a major story written about it in Life magazine. And, you know, he took his own take on it, but it made it sound like when people walk away, they normally enter a witness protection program, become witnesses. Well, that's not what I wanted to do, and that's not what I did, but they made it sound like I was doing that. So immediately, the boss of my family got very nervous, and I put a contract on my life. The FBI, whether they were making this up or not, they came in and said, listen, we got word from our informants, and, you know, they put a contract on your life. You have. Your father went along with the contract. He was very upset with you. And so they put all of this stuff in my head, and I wasn't really buying into it, but I had committed to walking away at that point. So I talked about the life, but, you know, really, that was the extent of it. And, you know, I wanted the government at that time to really understand that I was done. I wasn't going back because I. I became a major target. I mean, I. I was arrested 18 times. I had seven indictments. I had two federal racketeering cases. I had one state racketeering case in the state of Florida. I went to trial five times throughout my tenure in that life. So they were never going to let me go. Never. And I just wanted them to understand, I'm really done. So, yeah, I'll talk to you. I don't want to put people in prison. I'm not doing that. They were very, very upset that I didn't go the distance with them. They threw me back in prison as a result, kept me in solitary confinement because of it. But, you know, in the end, it all worked out for me. I went through probably 10 or 12 years of a real struggle as a result of it, but it ended up saving my life.
- [66:16]
Interviewer
Obviously, you didn't flip, but many guys did. And at that point, after rico, with these extremely long sentences that so many people were being handed, how did you feel when people that you knew did that? Did you understand or could you not? Because it's something that you would never do.
- [66:34]
Michael Franzese
Well, it was something that I wasn't going to do. You know, I didn't have it in me to put other people in prison. You know, and when I was talking to the government, there were limits that I knew that I can do. I basically the government admitted that I kind of outsmarted them because is I gave them just enough, but never enough to put somebody in prison. And to me, that's the ultimate. You don't want to put people in prison. That's it. I spoke about things that people already knew about. And, you know, the government was very upset with me. That's when they threw me back in prison for, you know, on a parole violation for another four years. But, you know, look, I. I have never seen an informant, and I've had many informants against me and against my dad, get on the witness stand, put their left hand on the Bible, right hand, swear to tell the truth, and then lie. And most informants and most people that enter the program, they do it because they don't want to go to prison. And they can make all the excuses that they want. They say the life treated them bad and all of this, but they just don't want to go to prison. And the RICO act, you know, when you got indicted under rico, you're facing a lifetime of prison and it created a lot of informants. Do I agree with it? No. I mean, I don't. You know, there was. There was guys that wired themselves up and became government agents to put other people in trouble, that these were their brothers, they did things together, and you're engaging them in more criminal activity, but you're not going to get in trouble because you're now working for the government and you're doing it all to put these people away and for you to get out of prison. So I can't justify that. I really can't. I mean, if there was a real moral issue or if somebody's family was devastated as a result, we didn't go after families, we didn't hurt family members. So nobody really has that excuse. So you were part of that life. You know, you got to take the good with the bad with it and to blame the life and say, well, they didn't treat me right. Well, come on, we're street guys. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in that life that shouldn't go on, but we signed up for it. So if you couldn't navigate it smartly and your only out was to put other people in trouble and put them in jail to save yourself, I can't agree with that. I just can't.
- [69:00]
Interviewer
Yeah, like a live by the sword, die by the sword mentality. If you can't outsmart them, how early did you recognize that the life was in massive trouble?
- [69:13]
Michael Franzese
Well, I. I really realized that when. When the RICO act came in, because guys were becoming informants left and right. And I just saw it. I said, people are not going to stop, stand up under this amount of time. You know, you give a guy like me five, 10 years, even 15, you know, you do. You do 60, 70% of that with parole. Anybody can do that time, and you realize it, it's part of the life. But when you start putting guys away for 25, 30, 50, 100 years with no chance of parole, it's totally different. You know, I always say this, and this is my take on it, fear did keep people in line. You know, Chaz Palmateri, I think you know who he is. The movie the Bronx Tale. There's a line in the Bronx Tale where the little young guy asks the mob boss there, Chaz, is it better to be loved or feared? And he said, well, it's better to be feared. And Chaz is a friend of mine. I talked to him about that. Again, he's not involved in the life. But I said, chaz, what do you think? You think it's better to be fear, feared or to be loved in that life? He said, oh, it's better to be feared. I said, chaz, you're wrong. He said, what do you mean? I said, fear did keep people in line to a certain extent, but what happened is the fear of the mob and retribution was transferred to the fear of the government when you're going away for the rest of your life. So people started to turn as a result of that. So fear only works to a certain point. But when you love somebody, you're more apt to be loyal to them and not to hurt them. At least that's how I feel. I'm not going to hurt somebody I love, but somebody I'm feared. If I'm not afraid of them anymore, I'll act. And that's what happened in that life. People just got afraid of going to jail forever. They didn't love the boss, they didn't love them. They were kept in line because that's part of the life. But that's what really had the life fall apart. The life that I knew and that I was part of. It's not the same today, and it'll never be the same, in my opinion.
- [71:15]
Interviewer
That's fascinating to me because it's like a. It's like a Mafia twist. On Machiavelli, like those precise things. And you mentioned A Bronx Tale. I'm really interested in the interaction between the Mafia and pop culture. Like, what influence did Guys in the Life have on the movies that were coming out and defining the image of the Mafia and vice versa. Like, did anybody really thrive and enjoy playing up to that in the life as well?
- [71:43]
Michael Franzese
Well, I can tell you, when the Godfather came out because of the. The way the life was presented, a lot of honor, a lot of respect, a lot of very forceful characters like Vito Corleone and. And Michael, they were. These were, you know, these were tough characters. I mean, and they had integrity and dignity to a certain point. Guys started to walk around, carry themselves differently after the Godfather came out. It elevated the stature of the mob. It really did. And I saw it, I witnessed it, I watched it. I said, wow, this really had an impact. So in that regard, I think a lot of mob guys, even though they may not admit it, they loved the Godfather. Love God, I Love the Godfather 1 and 2. I thought they were tremendous, you know, and you have to understand, there's no other organized crime group really in the world that has been romanticized like the Mafia, you know, starting with Al Capone. I mean, he was bigger than life. John Gotti, bigger than life. You know, the way they dressed, the way they carried themselves, the power that they had. Even my father, Sonny Francis, I mean, these were romanticized to a degree where it became a natural for the entertainment industry to present guys like that. You know, another thing is people think that we had to chase people and strong on them to like us. Well, that's not true at all. They wanted to be. Most people wanted to be around us. You know, when I would walk into the Copacabana with my dad, my dad was. Forget it. He was like a magnet. People were taken to him in a way. It happened to me to a degree when I, you know, started to become prominent in that life. They wanted to be around us. They enjoyed the atmosphere. They enjoyed saying, hey, you know, Sonny, Michael, I know them. They're my friends. We didn't have to strong arm them or, you know, the guys that knew how to use that life to their benefit, they really. They really had it going on. I have to say that.
- [73:48]
Interviewer
Do you think that magnetism, that romanticism is a factor in the downfall of the Mafia? Because, of course, you had Rico. But the way that the media changed these figures became so prominent. John Gotti is another really obvious example of that.
- [74:03]
Michael Franzese
Yeah, I think that the FBI really saw us as A threat. The government really saw us as a threat. And there was two things. Number one, they knew the government knew that we were very powerful because we control the unions, we controlled politicians. You know, for 100 years, we had a lot of power in this country. We controlled a lot of things that went on. You control the unions, you control the country in a way, because what do politicians want? Well, they want money and they want votes. And we were able to provide them with both. You have the Teamsters union. You got two and a half million members, plus their families. That's a big voting bloc. And then you had huge pension funds to support their campaigns and things that they wanted to. So they wanted to be around us. We had that influence. And I think the FBI said, wow, we go after these guys and we put them away. They're romanticized. It's a big feather in our cap. The good thing about going after the mob, they don't shoot back at us. It's not like the cartels or any of that. They don't shoot back. You know, we put the cuffs on them. They go to court, and they bail out and they fight the case. So it's a big feather in their cap to capture somebody like us and put us away. I think that's why we became the primary target of the FBI, because of the influence that we were wielding and because of the fact that we made careers and there's no getting away from that. And I know a lot of law enforcement won't want to admit it, but it's the truth.
- [75:35]
Interviewer
And made careers in law enforcement and in politics as well. I. How embedded was the Mafia with your politics and wider politics at that point?
- [75:45]
Michael Franzese
Very much embedded. And, you know, I don't know if the truth will ever come out. I think it's coming out in dribs and drabs, so to speak. But we absolutely played a part in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The government came to us. I can't pinpoint the agency. I believe it was a CIA, because that's what I was told. And I was told this from people that have no reason to lie. But Joseph Kennedy came to us at that time because the election was razor thin between Nixon and Kennedy, and we had to deliver the state of Illinois to them. We had tremendous influence there. We delivered the state, and the deal was that the Department of Justice was supposed to back off of us. Robert Kennedy did just the opposite. He came after us even harder. And I believe Robert Kennedy was the one that initiated all of this against my dad, and he was the major factor, because up until that point, J. Edgar Hoover never even admitted that the mob existed because we had dirt on him, we had dirt on Hoover, and that's a fact. So we had that influence right into the White House. Joseph Kennedy was a bootlegger. I know they try to. They try to downplay that and say it wasn't true, but it was absolutely true. He was a bootlegger along with a lot of the guys, and he knew a lot of guys. So we had influence right into the White House. I had influence in New York when I was in the gas business and I needed licenses. I had a very strong political contact that was getting me the license. I couldn't get him on my own and I was paying him for it. And he was a Democratic leader at the time. So we did have these relationships. Frank Costello, they called him the Prime Minister because of his political connections that he had, you know, his gambling operation. He was feeding a lot of politicians at that time throughout the country. So we were able to infiltrate, so to speak, the government to that point. And I think the FBI and they didn't like it, you know, and they said, we're going to go after these guys. And that's what happened.
- [77:53]
Interviewer
Do you remember at the time, like when the assassination happened, do you remember hearing people talk about it there and then as Mafia involvement?
- [78:01]
Michael Franzese
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I remember it distinctly. I remember. I remember one time when my mom, it was 19. It's just when the assassination happened in 63, I was 12 years old or something. And I remember going in and my mom went into, into the kitchen and said, oh, how sad. You know, JFK was shot. And my father looked at her and said, sad. I said, you should have shot the whole family. We, he said, we should have got the whole family. I mean, my father at that time was the first time, that's right when it happened, you know, so he was even aware of it. And then I heard a lot of conversation about it, you know, throughout my life, that we were responsible for that. You know, look, Jack Ruby, he was absolutely associated with, you know, Chicago with Al Capone, later on with, with Cardo. He was very tight with the guys from Louisiana with Carlos Marcelo. That's how he was set up in Dallas to run his strip clubs that he had at the time. He was the, the guy set up to go and kill Oswald because they didn't believe Oswald was going to, to stand up because Oswald knew what the story was also. And, you know, the Warren Commission, this is how, you know, that it's totally fake. The Warren Commission said they couldn't establish any ties between Jack Ruby and the mob. And there was multitude of ties between. Everybody knew Jack Ruby was involved with us. So I believe these classified documents, they don't want to show that the mob was involved in the assassination of a sitting president. But if there was ever really exposed, I think you're going to see that every time they're going to release them, they decide not to release them. Even Trump, he was going to release the Kennedy and then he didn't because pressure is put on him saying, no, you can't do that. You know, we know there's other forces at work. You know, the president doesn't run the country, country, so to speak. So there's a lot that went on. We had tremendous influence and I think there was a point in time they said, hey, we got to put a stop to this. And that's why they came after us so heavy.
- [80:12]
Interviewer
As somebody who's been a target of the highest echelons of government, who do you think runs the country?
- [80:19]
Michael Franzese
Who do I think runs the country? Well, I think. Look, I think this whole matter with the Epstein file files is giving us a good indication. I can't put my finger on it, but there's no question, no question that there are a lot of very powerful people involved in the Epstein files. You know, there was a congresswoman that said that she had a phone call, this was recent. I think it was Marjorie Taylor Greene. She had a phone call with Trump about the Epstein files. And when she was releasing, when she was fighting to release the files files, this was a personal phone call between her and the president. She revealed it, that she said, Mr. President, what are you worried about? You're not in the files. And he said, a lot of my friends are and we have to stop it now. What does that mean? That means that people aren't. That people that have influence, not only here, but Israel, but all over the world are saying you can't release those files. So I can't put my finger on it, you know, I mean, but there's no question that there are other forces at work here. Otherwise those files would be released. Why not? I mean, this is a horrible thing that occurred with these young women and they're hiding it. There's no question.
- [81:38]
Interviewer
Given that you've done jail time and what happened to a lot of the guys and your family and your friends, does it frustrate you that politicians seem to have been able to get away with being so embedded with the mafia Benefiting from their actions at times. Doing what you just outlined. Like, do you, do you feel like there's a lot of hypocrisy?
- [82:02]
Michael Franzese
Well, you know, I feel this way and I don't want to sound. How could I say? I don't want to sound moralistic in a way. But, you know, we were on the street. We didn't take an oath to protect the people. We weren't elected, you know, to benefit the people of this country or anywhere else. But these politicians are. They campaign on it. They take an oath and they get into office, many of them, and they do just the opposite. They enrich themselves to the detriment of the people, the taxpayers. And I, I just can't go along with that. I mean, I, I still have something in me from the mob, the code that we're supposed to honor and respect one another, you know, but that's a criminal lifestyle. That's. There's a lot of backstabbing and there's a lot of betrayal in that life. That's part of the life. But when you're in government and you take an oath to benefit the people that put you in office, and then you do just the opposite, whether it be with organized crime or anything else, I just think that's horrible. And I think politicians do it more and more and more. And I think they're worse than mob guys. I really mean that. I think they're worse because they take an oath to do just the opposite. And, you know, look, there's a lot of guys in that life that I really love that were good people. And sometimes my wife will even say to me, you know, how can you say they were good people? They killed people. I said, you know, there's an age old dilemma. Why do good people do bad things? It doesn't mean that they're bad people. They might be misled. They might. You know, they might. Who knows what the reason is? But it doesn't mean they have a bad heart and that they're bad people to begin with. And I knew a lot of guys in that life that were good people. They did bad things. So did I. I did bad things. I did things that while I was doing them, I, I felt terrible about. I did it anyway because I took an oath and I said, I'm supposed to be doing this, but I knew it was wrong. I did it anyway. So did that make me a bad person? It made my behavior very bad. No question about it. But inwardly, when you know you're doing something wrong, you know, and obviously there's an extent of that, too. You know, that there's a line that you don't cross. I mean, there's certain things that I didn't care what the mob told me I wouldn't do. I would have left or ran away or did something. But, you know, and look, I have to say this because people always talk about the murder. I get asked a million times, you know, did you ever kill anybody in all of this? And, you know, look, I don't have immunity. I didn't enter the program. I can only say this. If you're part of that life, you're part of the violence, whether you know about it, whether you involved in it personally, you know, you're part of it. You can't escape it. There's no escape to that. So, you know, I can't justify anything like that, other than the fact that I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing as part of that life. And I thought it was a just and honorable life. And that's how you look at it. But you can't justify it.
- [85:14]
Interviewer
You're a man of faith. Has your faith growing, grown over time, or did you also strongly connect to your faith when you were in the mob undertaking violent activities? Did it help you, or did you have to really compartmentalize?
- [85:30]
Michael Franzese
Yeah, you know, I grew up Catholic. Catholic school. I was an altar boy, the whole bit. But, you know, for me, Catholicism was more like a subject in school. I didn't have a really feeling of my faith. I didn't have a relationship with God. So I didn't think of it when I was in the life. The life was everything to me. That was the commitment I really made.
- [85:53]
Interviewer
Was your religion? In a way?
- [85:56]
Michael Franzese
Yeah. Yeah, you could say that. You can say it was my religion. Obviously, when I became a person of faith, later on, I realized that that was just wrong. Everything was wrong. And I have more of a moral compass right now than I did back then. I had a moral compass for the religion of the mob, which was wrong, you know, but now I have it for the right reason, you know, because God is God, and he's the one that I honor and respect and love. But it's complicated in a way, and then it's kind of simple.
- [86:36]
Interviewer
Michael, last question to you. If you were teaching a history class about the American Mafia, what is something that you think is still too hidden or that people don't talk about enough associated with the life? We talk a lot about the violence and about the money and the influence. Are we missing anything?
- [86:57]
Michael Franzese
Well, I think sometimes we miss the impact that it had on. On some of the guys in that life. You know, that they're real people. They're not larger than life. I mean, you look at a Gotti or you look at Capone or people like that, Luciano. Yeah, because they're made up to be larger than life. But, you know, they have families. You know, things happen that have tremendous, you know, effect on them. I can give you a story once that always sat with me. There was another maid guy that I was driving home from. From. I don't remember where we were, but I was driving him to his house in Brooklyn. And when we got in front of his house, he said, could you wait a minute? Don't leave. And I said, yeah. And he went up to his front door, put the key in the door and opened the door. And I seen him kind of looking inside. And then he closed the door and got back in the car. And I said, what happened? I said, you were ready to go in. He said, well, I can't go in my house because nobody's home. And I kind of laughed. I said, well, what do you mean? It's your house. He said, no, I can't go in my house when nobody's home. And it just so happened that him and his brother, his father was also part of the life. And his father had allegedly been having an affair with another guy's wife or daughter. I don't remember. And because of that, that's a bad violation in a. That life. Well, he had a death sentence on him, and the two brothers were the ones that killed their father. And he said, I can't go in my house when nobody's there because the ghost of my father is there and it haunts me. And he had killed his father 30 years earlier. Thirty years, he's never been in his house. He said he had an experience, he could never go back in the house. So, yeah, I mean, this. These guys were. A lot of them were just regular guys who bought into something, and it really had an impact on them, you know, and this is only one of, you know, stories that I could tell. Look, it had an impact on me that they're not larger than life. They are regular guys, and they're not just stone cold killers. And when they do something, it does get to them. So we don't see that. We don't see that in the life. We just think that everybody's a shooter, everybody's a killer, everybody's a schemer, everybody's a law violator. But they're also human beings and maybe they bought into something that they thought was going to be something else and they didn't know how it was going to impact them.
- [89:31]
Interviewer
Michael, thank you so much for your time today and for your candor and empathy. It was really interesting and I really appreciate it. Thank you.
- [89:42]
Michael Franzese
Well, thanks for having me. And, you know, listen, I try to tell it like it is and hopefully people understand that.
- [89:50]
Interviewer
There's no question that society has romanticised mobsters. There's something undeniably compelling about outlaws who build empires from nothing. Sometimes, like Michael was saying, they can paint a pitiable picture as their empires collapse and their families fracture. But the bill still comes due. Behind the suits and the swagger were rackets and victims. So why do you think that the legend has become so powerful? Is it movies like the Godfather or the perfection of Gandolfini's performance? Or is it more about what they were building on? These men who could bend a city to their will without holding office? Maybe shadow self impulses laid bare? Let me know in the comments. And when the Mafia finally weakened after Rico hollowed it out, when the old neighbourhood anchors dissolved, what filled the vacuum it left behind? That is a subject for another episode. See you next time on History Uncensored.