Mafia States of America | Episode 5 - "The Fall of the Mafia"

Summary

PBD Podcast – Mafia States of America | Episode 5: "The Fall of the Mafia"

Date: November 11, 2025
Host: Patrick Bet-David (PBD)
Main Guests: Former FBI Agent/Investigator, Former Mafia Members/Insiders

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the factors behind the decline of the American Mafia, bringing together law enforcement and ex-Mafia insiders for a candid, detailed, and at times emotional conversation. The discussion explores the impact of legislation (notably RICO), the role of prosecutors like Rudy Giuliani, infamous informants and undercover agents, public exposure, internal discipline and arrogance, and cultural changes. The group reflects on the end of an era, how law and society outmaneuvered organized crime, and the personal costs left behind. The tone shifts between analytical, regretful, and even combative as each side brings their perceptions and grievances to the table.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The RICO Act and Legal Innovations

• Game-Changing Laws:
  • The RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act, Bail Reform and Sentencing Reform Acts of the 1980s fundamentally changed the landscape for organized crime.
  • "With the racketeering law, the Bail Reform act, you didn't get any bail. The Sentencing Reform act, where all of a sudden they abolish parole. You're doing 85% of your time. The sentences went through the roof." (Former Mafia Member, 03:13)
• Difficulty of Defense and Severity of Sentences:
  • RICO made prosecution easier and more sweeping; it became expensive to fight, and sentences were much longer, causing many to flip and cooperate.
  • "With the RICO Act, that's very hard to defend. To me it's unconstitutional." (Former Mafia Member, 04:00)
  • "Anybody could have done the amount of time that we did prior to the RICO Act. But after that... you're doing 20, 30, 40 years... that was the end of it. A lot of guys cooperated as a result." (05:51)
• Asset Forfeiture:
  • The law enabled the government to seize criminal assets, eroding the foundational power of organized crime.
  • "The most important thing it allows you to do is to seize their property." (Former FBI Agent, 04:41)

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2. The Role of Informants, Wiretaps, and Surveillance

• Witness Protection & Flipping:
  • WITSEC (Witness Protection) changed incentives, providing real escape routes for those willing to cooperate with authorities.
  • "Changing people's names, moving them, giving them money... it gave them a way out." (Former Mafia Member, 06:48)
• Wiretapping and Tech Advances:
  • Advances in surveillance made cases airtight, often convicted by their own words.
  • "We got into Fat Tony's Social Club for nine months. It was like a recording studio… Imagine what we could do today." (Former FBI Agent, 08:46)
• Undercover Agents (e.g., Joe Pistone/Donnie Brasco):
  • Undercover work pushed boundaries of trust and even personal/family lines, causing unique resentments among insiders.
  • "But when he comes over your house and he meets your wife and your daughter… and then he's putting words in your mouth… That turns my fucking stomach." (Former Mafia Member, 26:32)

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3. Cultural Shifts and Erosion from Within

• Loss of Omertà & Discipline:
  • The old code of silence (omertà) was easier to uphold when sentences were short; long sentences, fear of loss, and societal changes unraveled this.
  • "The fear of the government overpowered the fear that we had on the street." (Former Mafia Member, 05:51)
• Arrogance and Exposure:
  • High-profile members and public stunts (e.g., Joey Gallo, Joe Colombo with the Italian American Civil Rights League) brought unwanted attention and "challenged the FBI and the police to do something about it." (Former FBI Agent, 15:32)
• Cultural Representation:
  • Movies like "The Godfather" and "Goodfellas" cemented public ideas, making it impossible to credibly deny the Mafia's existence during trials.
  • “However, all those movies… everybody knows there's a Mafia. So when you went in, you were half dead.” (Former Mafia Member, 11:54)

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4. The Power of the Bonanno Book and Prosecutorial Strategy

• A Book That Brought Down the Mafia:
  • Joe Bonanno’s autobiography inadvertently provided prosecutors with a roadmap for indictments under RICO.
  • "He had a chart, and the chart had all the commission members… If I can fill in the people up to 1983, I have a RICO case." (Former FBI Agent, 01:07, repeated at 19:50)
  • "He put the RICO indictment together. He put the racketeering law together for me... He was the guy that did it." (Former Mafia Member, 25:04)
• Rudy Giuliani's Role:
  • Giuliani was inspired by the Bonanno book to use RICO in new ways to take down the Commission, orchestrating landmark cases.
  • “Giuliani reads that book… Bonanno gave me the whole case… he admitted to the Commission. He allowed me to… go after the entire Commission.” (Former Mafia Member, 25:04)

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5. Reflection on the Mafia’s Collapse and Its Legacy

• Internal Reflections:
  • Many former members now view the fall as necessary, expressing regret and seeing opportunities for legitimate success after “the life.”
  • "At a certain point… I actually think it’s a good thing. The Mafia should collapse. We should get rid of it. We don’t need it. The Italian people, it only hurts us." (Former Mafia Member, 41:18)
• Ability to Adapt:
  • Former members note their skills translated to business, arguing that many could have been successful away from crime.
  • "We have a little bit of an edge because we look at business a different way. We use common sense. I don’t think they teach that in school." (Former Mafia Member, 41:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On how the racketeering law changed the game (03:13):

  • “Mid-80s racketeering law… the sentences went through the roof. The racketeering law, until today, I believe it’s unconstitutional… that’s what put everybody away.” – Former Mafia Member

• On losing the street code (05:51):

  • “The fear of the government overpowered the fear that we had on the street. And as a result, a lot of guys went the other way, and you just couldn’t overcome it.” – Former Mafia Member

• On Carmine Persico admitting the Mafia in court (12:32):

  • “Now, what happened is Carmine Persico didn’t take that note. He got his lawyer, honestly, and told his lawyer to admit it in court. The lawyer admitted it on closing arguments… They grabbed this lawyer on the street, put a couple of guns to his head, and he admitted that Carmine Persico told him to do it.” – Former Mafia Member

• On the combination of factors that led to the fall (14:37):

  • “All of that… But I think the most important thing that brought them down… was their loss of discipline.” – Former FBI Agent

• On the practicality of surveillance (08:46):

  • “We got into Fat Tony’s Social Club for nine months. It was like a studio. It was like a recording studio. And consider we’re talking about 1983 technology. Imagine what we could do today.” – Former FBI Agent

• On Bonanno’s book as a fatal error (01:07, 19:50):

  • “He had a chart… It goes up to 1963. If I can fill in the people up to 1983, I have a RICO case.” – Former FBI Agent

• On regret and the possibility for change (41:18):

  • “I actually think it’s a good thing. The Mafia should collapse. We should get rid of it. We don’t need it. The Italian people, it only hurts us.” – Former Mafia Member

• On the personal toll (35:26):

  • “Don’t tell me about people I killed when you killed just as much. And don’t tell me how many families I hurt when you hurt ten times more families.” – Former Mafia Member (confronting Giuliani’s legacy)

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 01:07–04:41 | RICO law and its impact on prosecution | | 05:51–06:48 | Fear, cooperation, and the end of omertà | | 08:46–11:05 | Wiretaps and legal process for surveillance | | 12:04–14:09 | Internal debate over admitting Mafia’s existence in court | | 14:37–15:31 | Discipline, arrogance, and public exposure | | 17:48–19:12 | Convicting themselves via surveillance tapes | | 19:20–25:41 | The Bonanno book’s inadvertent exposure and Giuliani’s prosecutorial strategy | | 25:46–28:44 | Undercover agents: admiration and resentment | | 31:30–35:26 | Personal legacies: Rudy Giuliani, Pistone, and impacts on families | | 41:18–43:30 | Final reflections: Escaping the life, legitimacy, regret |

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Conclusion

"The Fall of the Mafia" offers an intimate and often raw inside view of not only how the Mafia unraveled but why—from both the perspective of those who took it apart and those who once lived it. The episode argues that it wasn’t just law enforcement, or a single informant, or even a single law, but a confluence of legal innovation, relentless prosecution, betrayal, and a gradual internal rot. Former criminals and prosecutors alike find some common ground: the Mafia’s time was up, and the future lay elsewhere for those willing to seize it.

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For listeners seeking to understand the real-world end of America’s Cosa Nostra, this episode is a masterclass in both history and human nature.

Transcript

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[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

And all of a sudden this book comes out. He had a chart, and the chart had all the commission members, their pictures, and he explains the commission in detail. So you see that chart right there? It goes up to 1963. If I can fill in the people up to 1983, I have a RICO case.

[Mafia Insider / Former Member]

Omerta is more than a word. It's a way of life. It traces its roots back all the way to the Roman Empire. Or Murta is handling your business like a man, keeping your mouth shut and choosing death over dishonor. Staying true to Amertha wasn't hard when getting pitch meant a little stretch in the can. Three or four years. Come on. They could do that standing on their head. But when the government started putting people away for centuries, guys not only started singing, but they started composing.

[Interviewer / Host]

What caused the fall of the mob? Was it Pistone? Was it Giuliani? Was it Valachi? Was it Tommaso Becchetta? Was it arrogance? Was it not staying low key? Was it Joe Bonanno's book? What was it that caused the fall of the mob.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

For me? Mid-80s racketeering law, when the government changed or leveled the playing field to a degree that we just couldn't keep up with it. With the racketeering law, the Bail Reform act, you didn't get any bail. The Sentencing Reform act, where all of a sudden they abolish parole. You're doing 85% of your time. The sentences went through the roof. The racketeering law, until today, I believe it's unconstitutional. I had three racketeering indictments. A lot of things happened as a result of those laws. And you know that's what put everybody away.

[Interviewer / Host]

Was it, was there something before that that brought up the rico? Like I'm trying to go to the, like the, you know, the seed what caused the ripple effect to get to.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

The rico, you know Patrick, years ago before the racketeering laws and I think Stanley will bear me out. Guy gets convicted, he gets 10 years, 15 years, he makes parole, he does seven, eight, nine. Anybody can do that kind of time. Everybody did that kind of time. But when you change the playing field to where you bring in a law like the RICO act, that's very hard to defend. To me it's unconstitutional. To me it's, they're able to use. You need two predicate acts in the RICO Act. One has to be within the five year statute of limitations. The other act could be something that you did 30 years ago that you got convicted of, that you did your time for and everything else.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

RICO basically makes it a crime to have a crime business. So I can go rob a bank, that's a crime. You and I could agree to go rob a bank, that's a conspiracy. We give an extra penalty to this. But suppose we agree that for the next 20 years we're going to rob five banks year now we've established a RICO enterprise. We've established basically we've established an informal business to commit crime. Now what does that allow you to do? It allows you to put them in prison for a lot longer. But the most important thing it allows you to do is to seize their property. And the biggest problem with the Mafia now was for a long time Hoover ignored it. Then they started prosecuting it. But all they were doing was helping the line of succession. They'd take number one out, they'd take number two out, there'd be a little gang war and somebody else would take over the multi billion dollar business because nobody affected the numbers rackets, the fixing of boxing matches, the skim from Las Vegas, the drug trade, nobody knew anything about that.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

So unconstitutional in that regard. But what happens, it was a very hard law to defend. It was very expensive to defend with the lawyers. And the amount of time that they gave out, you know, anybody could have done the amount of time that we did prior to the RICO Act. But after that, you know, you telling guys, hey you're doing 20, 30, 40 years, you're never getting parole, that's it, you know, that was the end of it. A lot of guys cooperated as a result of that because they say I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in Jail, you know, it goes to this whole thing of love and fear, which is a more powerful emotion. They're both powerful. But I think in the end, I disagreed with Chas Palminteri on this in the movie. I think what happened with the government is that the fear of the government overpowered the fear that we had on the street. And as a result, a lot of guys went the other way, and you just couldn't overcome it.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

You couldn't overcome it.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And along with the Witness Protection program. Exactly. Changing people's names, moving them, giving them money, doing a whole host of different things, it gave them a way out. And all of those names that you had mentioned, Donnie Brasco and all of these names, it started to deteriorate in a big way. So now when guys were getting pinched and going back to what Michael said, a lot of them are betrayed by people. So when you're being betrayed, it's easy to say, well, I'm not doing this. And now the government gave you an avenue to get out. Years ago, during the commission trial, Carmine Persicol, who was a pretty fierce boss, said in the trial that we should admit there's a Mafia because belonging to an organization, as long as you put it forward, like the Ku Klux Klan and so many other different weird organizations, it's not illegal. It's your actions that are illegal within that group. So you can be. He said we could say that all of the old timers who are bosses and admit he's a boss, he's an underboss, he's this. But we don't do anything wrong, and we're good guys. Now. You got to prove that he did something personally, not just this RICO law that they invented. And everybody can get caught up in it. They have somebody taking the stand. This is the Mafia. The boss has got to okay in his head. Even if he didn't, he sucked into it. And that was all successful. They used different equipment, bugs and tapes that were phenomenal.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Here's what I need to do. I need to break into Fat Tony's house or his social club. I need to do the same thing with Persico. I've got about four or five little things here where I got it. A lot of this work is going to be breaking in. I knew that I couldn't get this all done with just the FBI. So I said to Bill Webster, bill, you gotta go pick for me 20 guys on the national security side, the guys who were busting in on the Communists, because I used to be in Charge of them, too. When I was associate of Chinatown and I did the first FISA warrants, all basically for Russian Communists, I said, those guys are better than burglars. I mean, we don't have burglars in New York that are as good as them. They can get it any place. They go off sewers. He gave me 22 of them. He moved them over to the criminal side. And there was a lot of stuff to put that case together, but they were the key to it. I mean, we got into Fat Tony's. We got into Fat Tony's Social Club for nine months. It was like a studio. It was like a recording studio. And consider we're talking about 1983 technology. Imagine what we could do today.

[Interviewer / Host]

What made that legal? Meaning prior to the RICO laws, what Blakey wrote and said, would that have been legal to do prior to that?

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Now, there was a period of time when it would have been done illegally, but it wasn't illegal. They just did it.

[Interviewer / Host]

So was it. Was there part of it?

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Then there was a period of time they realized, stop it. We can't do surveillance without warrants. So then they set up a law. If you want to get. Want to put a bug in a house, if you want to put a camera in a house, a whole big wiretapping, bugging statute that requires you to show probable cause, go to a judge. Judge has to approve. It only lasts for one month. You got to go back to the judge and show him that you're getting evidence and that you're using it appropriately. You're not just spying on the guy. It was a very, very disciplined statute, which is what got me so angry with the Pfizer stuff that went on, because it was, like, totally inconsistent with the thousands of hours we used to work on this to make sure it was just perfect. Because if you made a mistake, they throw the whole thing out. There goes a four million dollar investment in all this. Boom. Because he had his wife on the.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Phone too long, all of this stuff combined changed the whole thing. Now, the bosses didn't agree with Carmine Persico. Every single one of them said no.

[Interviewer / Host]

Why?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

We will not admit, that's part of our oath, that we will not admit that there's a Mafia no matter what.

And I don't know it was such a bad strategy because every juror, I mean, you had a. You got to be living under a rock if you didn't have a preconceived notion of what the Mafia was all about. You hear Mafia, you hear Al Capone, you hear all bad names and you know it's a criminal organization, just a normal guy. So they didn't understand that, okay, he just admitted that he was in the Mafia, he must be a criminal.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Right?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

That was. That had to be in their heads right off the bat. So it was a bad strategy.

However, all those movies, Godfather, Goodfellas, everybody knows there's a Mafia. So when you went in, you were half dead.

But what I was told, Sammy, what I heard after, was that the tapes were so bad that there was no way they could have got around saying that there was no Mafia. They had to admit to the existence of the Mafia. I think it was the first time in a trial, especially of that magnitude that guys ever admitted there is a Mafia. I mean, other than, you know, Valachi and people that could understand and said it, but defendants, I don't think it ever happened before. They admitted that there wasn't one.

What happened there is that we were on the street. Me, Frank, Chico was alive, and we went to the Genovese family. Messages came out, they want to admit. And all the messages went back and said no. Everybody said no. Now, what happened is Carmine Persico didn't take that note. He got his lawyer, honestly, and told his lawyer to admit it in court. The lawyer admitted it on closing arguments, I think it was. And they had a fit. He tried to blame the lawyer. They grabbed this lawyer on the street, put a couple of guns to his head, and he admitted that Carmine Pescal told him to do it. Later on, Wild Bill, when the war was on, the Colombo war, he said, why are we fighting over him? He's a rat. He made the lawyer admit Wild Bill got killed because of that.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Like any other great organization from their point of view, they were fortunate to have Luciano and Lansky won. A financial genius, the other one, kind of an organizational genius, put together a structure that was better than anybody else. And if you followed their rules, they might still be. They had all remained low key. Yeah, like I'm running the olive oil business.

[Interviewer / Host]

So what brought them down? Would you say Valachi, you know, Bonanno's book? Would you say Tommaso Buschetta? Would you say Sammy? Would you say Blakey, the professor from Cornell, the RICO laws? Would you say the arrogance of Flamboyant me being out there for you to see kind of what I'm doing? Or would you say Rudy Giuliani brought him down? What brought these guys down? All is there one? That's the first domino effect.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

All of that. I'm not Even sure I know how to evaluate them in terms of what is most important. But I think the most important thing that brought them down, that brings down almost any group, was their loss of discipline.

[Interviewer / Host]

Their loss of discipline?

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Yeah, like the end of the Roman Empire or possibly what's going on with America now. They had a good set of rules. The set of rules got them through 30, 40 years with minimum scrutiny and even legitimately fooling people. And then some of them just had the egos, just had to. Had to like Colombo. Colombo did them great damage with that whole Italian American Civil Rights League. It was such a farce. And it was so obvious that really just offended people that he would do something like that. Joey Gallo.

[Interviewer / Host]

Can you unpack that a little bit?

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Joey Gallo got killed because he was sitting there talking about a brain Broadway play about him. How ridiculous is that? I mean, you do that, you're just challenging authority. I mean, Colombo. Colombo decided he'd put together something like the Anti Defamation League for Italian Americans. I mean, that only works if you have a legitimate source of prejudice. It becomes absurd if the people leading it are the people that are the actual people that you should be prejudiced against, the people who are killing others. So I think Colombo really, really hurt. I think Joey Gallo really hurt. They were the early ones that got a lot of publicity, and then that challenges the FBI and the police to do something about it. They got a little bit too big. Like often happens, organizations, they get arrogant.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

The collapse of the Mafia was happening for all of these reasons put together. What they didn't realize is that maybe there was a truth to saying maybe we should make this legitimate. We were talented in different ways. We could go legitimate and make money. We could stop killing one another. So I think you asked me once, well, what would you do? How do you stop this? If you don't kill them, there's no penalty. There is a penalty. You're no longer a main guy by all the families and all the people, you're dishonored. You disgraced your out without them instead of killing them, period. And then when you killing people all the time, bodies all over the place again, like Eze said, you go into a jury room on a murder, they know that's what we're doing. They find the guy in the trunk. Oh, that's the Mafia. They find a guy a certain way. Oh, that's the Mafia. So you. How do you beat cases anymore? And then you're going to do that kind of time. It's now it becomes life without parole.

And not Only that, Patrick, if you would have listened to some of the tapes. You didn't even need informants at that point. Guys convicted themselves. I had my Giuliani case. I had one guy. We had 16 CO defendants. I had one guy who was in the union. Sammy. They mentioned his name in the opening argument. They never mentioned his name again for three months that I was on trial. Never mentioned it again. We're about to give closing arguments. Last day of drop, we left. There was a bunch of us guys, you know, there. And they put the case on against this guy. And it's one tape. And in the tape, he was in a conference room. He was a union guy. He was in a conference room, and he was sitting around a bunch of guys, and he's making a speech. He said, listen, everybody needs to know this. What we're doing here is a crime. If this office is bugged, we're all going to jail. This is criminal activity. That's what he said on the tape. He got convicted. He got seven years. That was the only thing they said about him. He convicted himself.

Yeah, he did.

And that happened time and time again. Tony Ducks with Sally Avellino. And the tapes were horrible. Even the ones at Kaza Stork with Jerry Lang.

Paul's house was terrible. Tremendously bad. Terrible. I mean, in a whole bunch of different ways. They were disgusting, some of them, but. And those came from. From John Gotti and Angelo Ruggiero's tapes. It all started with that. And it all started with jokes.

[Interviewer / Host]

So Rudy Giuliani, Joe Pistone, Joe Bonanno. Who hurts you the most out of those three?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

To me. Look, I spoke to Giuliani directly, had a conversation with him, and he kind of, you know, he confirmed what we believed at the time, and you've probably heard of it, that Joe Bonanno wrote that ridiculous book to try to compare our life like it was a family and like he was a father. And it was so ridiculous. It was so absurd.

[Interviewer / Host]

Men of honor. Was it called something like that? Maid of honor.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Men of honor.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

So I'm going out of one job, going to a new job. And I know that the FBI has all this material on organized crime. I don't know it in detail. I just know it from my supervisory role. So I asked them to read the files. So they sent me a lot of the files, and all of a sudden this book comes out, an autobiography, I'm sure, ghostwritten, about Joe Bonanno. So I said, gee, it might be interesting to read this book. So I pull the Book. Get it. Start reading it. I'm about one third of the way through. And he had it organized into sections. Like, one section was his early life. Second section was being made. Third section was coming up. Fourth section was the commission, with four chapters. He had a chart, and the chart had all the commission members, their pictures going back to that original. He was one of the original 1931 guys that lucky put on. And he explains the commission in detail. So first of all, I mean, he definitely had pretensions of grandeur. He would say, you know, we're really like heads of state. Myself and Corallo and Castellano, we're like heads of state. And the commission is like the United nations for us. And it was a very good idea that Lucky had. I've always been in favor of as little killing as possible because it hurts business. So I'm reading the thing, and my wife is upstairs, and I say, donna, come down here. I want to show you something. So you see that chart right there? It goes up to 1963. If I can fill in the people up to 1983, I have a RICO case. Professor Blakey was the one who realized about 15 years earlier, only way we're going to stop this thing is by taking away their unusual, peculiar infiltration of business. We gotta take those businesses away. And then they just become another organized crime.

[Interviewer / Host]

What inspired him to do it? Because I'm curious, was he somebody that didn't like the mob? What was. Because it was a 19 Cornell University professor. What motivated him to do.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

It's very interesting, Patrick. I knew Professor Blakey pretty well, but not intimately, but I did know the rationale of it. And I had talked to him many times about it. And then when I was going to do it, I called him and I said, I want you to look at the book and tell me if I'm wrong. Isn't this, like, what you passed it for?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

He just.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

He just handed me. Because the first thing you've got to prove, you've got to prove the business. So we're not going to have articles of incorporation and we're not going to have a charter. We're going to have an oral agreement. Well, he just laid it out for me, and I said, he's going to be my chief witness. He's going to take care of the number one part of the case. We'll show the organization. Then it's my job to take each one of those charts and make it current. Went over to the Bureau. I started going through their files while I was still There I realized they had a lot of stuff. I realized there were a couple good investigations going on in the state. And by the time I got there, I had a lot of other things to do. But this was my project. And I did a chart, and the chart had all the Bonanno stuff, and then I put in the dyes. We had to get who we had to get to fill out the Genovese family. At that time, it was run by Fat Tony Salerno. So we had to get Fat Tony Corallo, each one of them, Castellano, Persico, each one of them. And then what do we have? So we had already a wire on Castellano in his house. The state prosecutor of corruption had a wire on Duck's Corral on his Jaguar where his driver would pick him up. And why they were important was every time they'd have a commission meeting, they. Or go somewhere and talk it over with the boys. He would talk it over with. He'd walk out of a commission meeting, and then we'd hear the whole commission meeting, his version of it. Fat Tony. Once again, Fat Tony won't murder anybody. I mean, I don't believe in a lot of murder, but we got to spill blood sometimes, you know. Then you hear the same description by Fat Tony when he went to his social club in East Harlem, Fat Tony would say, good. I don't know. I don't know. That guy would kill his mother. You'd get these great conversations. So I looked at it and I said, okay, let's make. Let's make a deal with the state. They come in, we make a task force.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Guys on the street. During that time, I remember I only heard Joe Bonanno's name with a. With a curse word next to it.

[Interviewer / Host]

Because everybody.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Everybody that I knew at that time and what Giuliani said afterwards is that he was one of the original architects of the racketeering law with this guy. DeBakey was on the books for over 10 years. I think 1970 was when it was created. They didn't know how to use it. The FBI didn't know how to use it. The government didn't know how to use it.

[Interviewer / Host]

This is a Cornell law professor, correct?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Ed DeBakey, I think his name was. All of a sudden, Giuliani reads that book. Book, he gets inspired. He leaves third position in the government to come down to be the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Strong position, you know, very high profile, because he had aspirations beyond that. And he reads that book and he says, bonanno gave me the whole case. He put the RICO indictment together. He put the racketeering law together for me so that he admitted to the Commission. He said he allowed me to construct that law or interpret that law in a way that I can go after the entire Commission. And he was the guy that did it.

[Interviewer / Host]

So Bonanno to you, then Rudy, then Pistone. You don't think Pistone had that much of an influence?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Look, we disagree. Pistone was an agent. He went in there. He did his job. He went undercover. Our guys did not check him out. And Sammy said it earlier, they didn't check him out the way he should have. The way they should have. And he was smarter than we were.

[Interviewer / Host]

Good guy. Would you say Joe's a good guy?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Look, I know Joe now, and I like him. I like him. I mean, look, back then, I wouldn't have liked what he did. I'm glad I only met him one time. We joke about that, but I don't believe he framed anybody. And, look, we always said this. I mean, I've had countless discussions with FBI agents. We said, look, you do your job. We understand the job you gotta do. We may not like it. We may not want to be you. But if you do your job right, and you don't frame us, that's your job. We get it. Just don't frame us.

I agree with that. Here's where I change directions. You can put bugs and taps, and if we're stupid enough to talk, on certain areas, in certain places, we deserve what we get. When I got pinched, I didn't hate the agents as long as they did their job in my case. And when I cooperated, they were clean. So I didn't really hate them. They were doing their job. But this guy here goes undercover. And there's nothing wrong with that either, to an extent. But when he comes over your house and he meets your wife and your daughter and your family eats with him, and he's fucking wired to the guilts. And then he's putting words in your mouth. You know what we could do, Michael? Your wife is in the background talking. That turns my fucking stomach. I can't like him even today.

[Interviewer / Host]

Till today, Joe Bstar.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

I can't like him even till today. I will give him credit for this. First of all, there was no contract on him. I think that was all bullshit.

Look, Sammy, let me ask you this. That's a good point. I always say this. When we got into that life, we were obligated to do certain things. If we were told to do something they didn't Say to us, hey, do this and we'll give you 10 grand. Or do this and we'll give you 50 grand. You were told to do something, you had to do it. I don't know of any time in my 20 plus years in that life that anybody was paid to put a contract on somebody. I don't know of it. I'm not saying it didn't happen.

No, it's not. I don't know. It's not the point of being paid. From what I understand this guy, and I don't know him. You know him. I don't really know him, but he went out. I didn't knew agents who knew him. He went way above what he was supposed to do, and that's what. Then he went out. He wasn't even supposed to write a book. He left the FBI. They were almost throwing him out because he was giving away secrets and writing a book about what? What he did. So he had a little greed in his ass.

I don't know if I believed it. Look, the government gave him a check for 500 bucks when he went undercover for six years. And look, I say this.

Why are we made at that? That's what he was supposed to do.

No, no, but I would say this. Listen, the guy had balls because I'll give him that. Any.

Any.

Patrick, any day a neighbor sees, why.

[Commercial Narrator]

Are you gonna have.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Anything could have happened.

[Interviewer / Host]

It's a long time where he could.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Have walked in the club the next day and get a bullet in the head.

Five and a half years.

Yeah.

And not only that, his family. He didn't see his family for four or five years. So I look at this guy, I said, what kind of guy is this? What kind of an obsession?

[Interviewer / Host]

His wife stayed with him till today.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Almost. Almost. Almost left him, sure. But what kind of guy that. And what's the obsession with it? And then, like I said, once he comes into the house, I just can't see it. If I meet Michael's wife, she's. From what I understand, she's a beautiful woman. But she's a beautiful woman inside. It kills me to want to hurt him. I may want to hurt him legitimately, but once I meet the wife, the kids, I know the life. I know I'm destroying. When I destroy him, I'm destroying them.

[Interviewer / Host]

What frustrates you most? What he did, what Rudy did, or what Joe Bonanno did? Because they each hurt the family in a different way.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

I would say this with Joe Pistone. He's indoctrinated into that life the way we were indoctrinated into our life, he's indoctrinated into the FBI. Same thing. He was told that we're the bad guys. And whether he volunteered, probably volunteered to go on.

He volunteered in doing these things way, way overboard. Going into the homes and doing certain things. Going by a club, planting a bug, telling them about a meeting. I think he went way overboard.

[Interviewer / Host]

He was in his job, though.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

He's doing his job well.

Way, way overboard. How about if I come and kill you in your house, right in front of your family and everything? I'm doing my job to kill you. What about if I do it right in front of your family? Go. And also, I will never kill you in front of your family.

[Interviewer / Host]

But his job is to kill us.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

In front of families.

[Interviewer / Host]

That's his job. His job is to manipulate you into thinking he's one of you.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

He's not you. He could do that anyway. He could do that in any club.

See, I've seen. I see what you said. If he would have had the wife on tape or the kids on tape and tried to involve them or use the wife against us.

No, they didn't do that.

I didn't do that.

The government itself didn't do that. They didn't need it. They had so much on them. But they did have those tapes.

Did Rudy.

[Interviewer / Host]

What Rudy did. Does that bother you at all? Rudy Giuliani?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Yeah, of course. Of course. It bothers me, too.

[Interviewer / Host]

Why Rudy?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Well, Rudy was another guy. You know these guys. Again, you're a prosecutor, someone brings you a case, so be it. He takes the law and he invents ways to like he says it's unconstitutional to corrupt the law to hurt these people.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

The key to doing the commission case and getting that high up was in fact the FBI's number one, having RICO, number two, having a great deal of intelligence that they were gathering, but they were really just going to use it for the purpose of putting the guy in jail and then my adding to it. Every time we do one of these cases, we bring a civil case and we take away the Fulton Fish Market. We declare it an illegal operation, and the government takes over ownership of it. We took over ownership of Umberto's Claimhouse because it was owned by organized crime. We actually ran it for a while. And I think one of the funny newspapers, the Daily News of the Post, said the worst thing about the federal government taking the food stinks. The food now stinks. But the big things we took over was fish market, the garment industry. And how about The Teamsters. We removed the entire board of the Teamsters and brought in legitimate people that extricated them from Las Vegas. Then I was able to follow through on some of this when I became mayor. So when I became mayor of New York, I set up a system much like Las Vegas with casinos. If you wanted a license for private carding, you had to get it from the city. And the city would do an organized crime background check on you. And we removed all the organized crime groups, and we made it possible for little people to come in and do it. And we also made it possible for the national companies to come in because they were afraid to come into New York. And when I ran for reelection for mayor in 97, I gave out posters to all the merchants saying, Giuliani got the 30% mafia tag back from us. We love them.

[Interviewer / Host]

Giuliani got the 30% mafia tax back for us because. Because it was a double tax. You're paying the government and you're paying the money.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

Yeah, so. So let's say they were essentially a.

[Interviewer / Host]

Form of a government.

[Former FBI Agent / Investigator]

And let's say it would really cost $1,000 a month to take the carding from a pharmacy, which is a little expensive because you got to worry about medicine and stuff like that. They would make it 30% more, 40% more, 50% more, and just keep it for themselves. It was like the biggest tax deduction they ever got. All of a sudden, $1,200 bill is now $700. And then the better companies came in, and that kind of really straightened that out.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

He's Italian. He's got the same roots and race that I have. Now he'll say, well, you hurt the Italian people because of your name and things you did. I cleaned it up. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. You did it in a different way. And if you don't think you've killed certain people, then go to see Sonny Black's family. Sonny Black, as soon as he found out what happened, knew he was going to get hit. Left his ring, his watch. When he was called, he knew he fucked up. And he walked in and got killed. And there was others who got killed with his actions. So how fucking proud are you? And don't tell me about people I killed when you killed fucking just as much. And don't tell me how many families I hurt when you hurt ten times more families.

[Interviewer / Host]

Rudy.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Rudy. And you're Italian. And then I can't stand when they fucking win like that and they hit each other. 5. One thing I like about the pistole story that it supposedly said, and I don't know if this is true, that it hurt him when Lefty Guns was hurt and was going to go to prison. And the only reason he didn't get killed is because they intercepted him. They intercepted him. He was arrested and he went away. Now, Lefty Guns, I knew him well. His granddaughter Ramona is my niece. When she used to hang out with my daughter, they were kids crawling in the house. She grew up like that. She's not my legitimate niece. She's my unadopted niece. I love her like I love my daughter. And they're like this till today. That's her grandfather that you destroyed. So I look at that, and just like this, people must hate me for what I did. Why shouldn't I hate him, Sammy?

[Interviewer / Host]

So you call out Pistone, you call out Giuliani, but you don't say anything about Bonanno, who wrote the book.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

I went to Paul's house one day and took me on his side, and he said, Mr. Joe Bonanno wrote a book. I said, I heard, but I didn't read the book. I knew who he was. I knew he wasn't in New York anymore, that he was in Arizona. And Paul says, I think I'm going to send you down there. And he can like to do this. Me? Yeah, as a boss. Another one. Okay. Not that I knew anything about him. Not that I disliked him. I. I get annoyed.

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

Experian.

So I'm gonna do this. I wasn't too happy about it. I know nothing about Arizona. I really didn't know nothing about him. His son was with him, Salvatore Bonanno, who is his consulaire. And some guys who were so well liked made guys who left with him. So there's a crew of them down there. I'm not too happy about this. Paul in a day backed off and said to me, it's the Bonanno people. It's their problem. Forget about what I told you, which is great. He wrote a book, he was chased. He Wrote a book. I mean, he explained some things. I remember. I don't remember the book, but I did read it. I remember at the end of the book, he says, this country doesn't need a president, it needs a father. Meaning like he was the father of a family. I believed in that. But they used that book when they wanted him to testify that he came out on a stretcher, going to the hospital, he wouldn't testify. So the book did hurt them. They used it, I believe, in the Commission case. That's Giuliani found a way to manipulate the whole thing. Even though the guy was gone all them fucking years, but he used the book. Another thing I don't like about Giuliani. The guy was gone, it was over. He wrote a book. I know we could smile all we want, but I don't dislike him all that much.

[Interviewer / Host]

You're saying you don't dislike Giuliani?

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

No. Bonanno. When I got out of prison the first time and I went to Arizona myself, I cooperated. Everything was behind. I get a message that Joe Bonanno wants to meet with me. Okay? Now I'm willing to meet with him. Now he's sitting with his son and some other guy. The other guy is a confidential informant and he's wife. So he tells his son, this Sammy Dubuque, I hear he's down in Arizona now, in Phoenix. And I want an appointment with him. I want to talk to him. So Salvatore Bonanno tells him this is all I. What do you want to talk with him for? Well, I want to make sure that there's no problems. Fuck him. He's a rat. He tells his son he never understood the life. A rat. If he's here and he wants to take over, we're going to. Some of us are going to be found in the trunk. That's this guy's style. That's how he'll take over. So he. You meaning me? So he says, I want to meet with him. So I get this message and I asked what's it about? And they tell me, what's it about? I said, I have the most utmost respect for him. He's an old timer and I'll meet with him, but there's really no need. You could tell him I have no intentions of taking over Arizona. I have no intentions of hurting him or his family. All I want is to be left the fuck alone. Me and my family. And that nobody bothers my family. That's the only way I will be a problem. So he goes back and he tells Me. And he says, great. And he sends me a message, that'll never happen. If somebody gives you a problem, send me a message and I'll help you. The agents got in touch with me. Sam, you're going to meet with Joe Bono? Yeah. Why? You're on parole, first of all. And then what were you going to talk with him about? I said nothing. He was a little concerned what I was going to do. And I told him I wasn't going to do nothing. And we never met. So I have a little bit of respect for him, that he wrote a book, he left a life. When he left, I didn't hate him either, Mike. When he left the life, people talked. I never wanted to hurt him. He's going to become famous. He's going to write a book or whatever he's going to do so to go into the entertainment business, it didn't bother me. He's gone. He's out of life. Get over it. Now. This happened up until now. The Mafia collapsed. At a certain point, when you're talking about all of these laws and all of these things, I actually think it's a good thing. The Mafia should collapse. We should get rid of it. We don't need it. The Italian people, it only hurts us. There's a lot of guys in there who could think now. He's been pretty successful in what he does. He changed his life, I changed mine, and I'm doing pretty good myself. And there's a lot of guys in there who could think and use their head and go into legitimate business. We have a little bit of an edge because we look at business a different way. We use common sense. I don't think they teach that in school. College of Northern. We learned that in the street, common sense. We learned how to sit down in negotiations like we're doing right now. And it gives us a different kind of an edge. I don't have a Harvard degree. I have an eighth grade education. He's pretty good at business. I said, he's a racketeer. He's a good racketeer with a good head on his shoulders. And I think every mafioso could do that in a way. Stop killing, stop all that bullshit and go into business.

[Mafia Insider / Former Member]

Coming up on Mafia States of America.

[Former Mafia Member / Insider]

When somebody tells you, you gotta go kill this guy. I don't even know this guy. What am I gonna. Well, you don't have to know what happened? Go kill him. What did he do? Never mind. Just go kill him, okay?

That's not normal, sir. It's not normal. Because you hope understand the beginning of Cosa Nostra, how this thing even started and what it was.

Sam. I don't care if it started 100 years ago. I'm not smirking at you. I don't care if it started 100 years ago or yesterday. It's not normal to you.

It's not normal. It's not good. Then keep that in your mind. It's not normal, but yet you'll break that. Not normal to defend. They don't kill somebody. Who? Family.

Are you sorry for the things that you did in that life?

Oh, beautiful for spacious skies Forever Waves of GR Majesty above the food it pain America oh, beautiful America.