Original subtitles

My fellow citizens,

I'd like to speak to you tonight about our future,

about a great historic effort

to give the words freedom, fairness, and hope

new meaning and power for every man and woman in America.

The early eighties was a golden era of our life, the Mob.

New York was the seat of power for that life all over America.

A special police task force has been assigned to investigate a long string

of shootings and murders in Manhattan and Queens.

We were always loan sharks.

We were always bookmakers. And we were always drug dealers.

But we diversified like you would in stock.

It's not just one industry.

You too can help us unlock the doors to a golden future.

You too can become leaders in this great new era of progress,

the age of the entrepreneur.

We prospered because we infiltrated every fabric of society,

from the guy on the street with the numbers business,

all the way up to unions.

Police in New Jersey say the death of two longshoreman officials

may also be Mob-related.

The problem with what the Mafia had done,

which no other organized crime group ever did before,

was instead of just being an organized crime group,

doing murder, doing extortion, doing loan-sharking, doing gambling,

doing prostitution,

they put their tentacles into legitimate society.

They controlled the fish market.

They controlled restaurants in New York City.

They controlled the transportation of our products.

They controlled the garment industry.

They had judges they put on the bench.

They had hospitals they controlled.

The docks, the ships... I can go on and on.

There is no instrument of hard work, savings, and job creation

as effective as the family.

The American dream belongs to you.

This way they can get money and keep their jobs.

The intention was to develop a RICO case

against each of the Mafia families.

We decided that we would tap five family squads.

And all the information about that particular family

would only go to that one squad.

There was the Gambino squad,

the Genovese squad,

Colombo, Lucchese,

and the Bonanno squad.

The purpose of this was to collect the information

about each of those families,

either from wiretaps,

or from informants,

or from surveillance,

to go after the hierarchy of the family

and their involvement with the labor unions,

until you got enough evidence

that you could use that to bring the whole organization down.

Well, he said they...

they gave me... $200.

Two hundred dollars...

It was July of 1982.

I'm assigned to the Colombo Squad.

Gennaro Langella was acting boss of the Colombo family.

They were engaged in all the traditional organized crime activities:

Loan-sharking,

illegal gambling,

theft from interstate shipment, hijacking.

And, of course, murder when they had to.

But we needed evidence to put together prosecutable cases.

While we're surveilling Gennaro Langella,

we see that on Fridays, he would go to the Casa Storta restaurant.

It was an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn.

And it turned out to be a meeting place for the hierarchy of the Colombo family.

My supervisor says to me,

"John, I have an assignment for you.

You're gonna be charged with getting a bug in the Casa Storta restaurant."

The idea was to scope it out and to figure out where to put this bug.

I tried to be interested in the food,

the table, and my date.

But what I'm really looking around for was where they're seated.

Gennaro Langella and the Mob guys

are in the banquet room where they're playing cards.

I tried to act as normal as possible.

Typically, when you're in a restaurant, you've gotta go to bathroom.

The place is just swarming with Mob guys.

I didn't look them in the eye.

I didn't identify who was there, what they were doing.

I just wanted to see where they were sitting.

At that point, now you've got a good layout of the place.

You have a real good idea of where they're spending their time

and where to place the bug.

In Casa Storta, we had some new challenges.

We had a dog to deal with.

Her name was Nina.

She was about 150 pounds. She was an Italian bullmastiff.

And when you were having dinner, Nina was walking around the restaurant,

and if you didn't like the fact that Nina was joining you for dinner,

go eat some place else.

You have to think like a criminal.

And I saw that there was no alarm-related issue to deal with.

There was no back or side door

that I could, you know, put ajar.

There was nothing other than we had to go in through the front door.

First, we get the lock guys to work on the locks.

Nina is throwing herself up against the door, and she is a big dog.

We're ready to do the entry,

and instead of me being the first one in,

Arthur with his injectable is gonna in.

But he's having anxiety over how old Nina is.

He's not sure he should poke her,

'cause none of us wants to harm any animal.

Once the door opens, Nina backs up a little bit.

He sticks his leg in the door to sort of shoo her.

She grabs his boot,

backs up,

closing his leg in the door...

and he is stuck.

We have to protect ourselves. The worst case, you'd have to shoot a dog.

Backup-plan-Kenny,

he comes to the rescue with the CO2 fire extinguisher.

Nina lets go,

backs up,

walks into the coat room, and goes in her bed.

Just like that.

We get the job done,

installing a microphone above the table...

and we're out of there.

With a restaurant you have a lot of ambient noise.

Lots of people inside, all talking at the same time,

some of them talking very loudly...

laughing, yelling.

You have dishes. You have glasses clattering.

Silverware being dropped.

So it presented a real challenge listening to those Mob guys.

But then we hear Gennaro Langella, the underboss.

At that point, two Mob guys enter the restaurant,

and we hear them being greeted.

And I hear one of them say, "That wire looks like it doesn't belong."

Next thing I know, everything goes dead.

They were on to us.

We realized that there was bugs everywhere.

There's FBI all around, watching.

The club's bugged.

The car is bugged.

Sometimes, one of the guys you're talking to has...

He's wearing a wire on his body.

I had fucking agents all around. They're looking for me.

Sure you know what you're doing?

They've wired up parking meters.

They wired up bushes.

They wired up homes.

Where've you been?

I got the mic on me.

And if you make the wrong move, and a lot of guys have,

they end up dead for it, and a lot of guys in jail for it.

He has dreams, this guy.

Wait a minute.

Do you realize you're talking to serious people?

Serious people...

You're the one that fucked everything up. I didn't do nothin'...

In 1981,

I was asked to investigate the Lucchese crime family's influence

in the garbage collection industry on Long Island.

At that point we knew

Tony "Ducks" Corallo was the boss of the Lucchese crime family.

Tony "Ducks" grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

And he became a soldier many, many years before and rose in the ranks.

And he eventually took over the crime family and became the boss.

I was assigned to the unit

that did backgrounds and intelligence on organized crime.

So we knew Tony "Ducks" was a character.

His nickname was because he had this ability to duck subpoenas,

and when they were coming to arrest him on something,

he was never home.

He was ducking out.

He was cagey,

real old-school.

Not flashy. Didn't wear $2,000 suits,

low profile.

But... a boss.

Our investigators start making inroads

into the Lucchese crime family.

And we eventually worked our way up from informants, to wire taps,

to ultimately identifying Sal Avellino.

Sal Avellino was a soldier in the Lucchese crime family.

A Long Island guy.

He drove a black Jaguar, four-door.

We learned two things about Avellino.

One is that he was the industry specialist for garbage...

in the Lucchese crime family.

And the second thing was that he drove Tony "Ducks" Corallo in his Jaguar.

He became his chauffeur, his confidant.

So we knew, obviously, that they were discussing

issues that would be of importance to us and provide evidence for us.

But to get the warrant,

to put a bug in the car, was extraordinarily difficult.

The question was how you prove to a court

that the two individuals in the car

would be having conversations about a particular crime.

Ron Goldstock called me up and he told me, "This is what we're doing."

They needed probable cause to get authority to put a bug in that Jaguar.

I spoke to my agents.

Costa said, "What do we know about this?"

So I needed to see one of my Lucchese informants.

Meeting the informants was always a concern,

because the last thing you needed to do was be seen...

because that would be the end of the informant.

He would be killed.

I had a hotel room in Midtown.

I'd call the informants and say, "Alright, meet me at the usual spot."

What I needed to know:

Does Anthony Corallo discuss family business

with Sal Avellino when they're driving?

The answer is: "Yes, he does."

And if you get a couple of sources, very good sources,

that say the same thing,

that's enough to satisfy a judge to get a warrant to bug the car.

The plan was

to bug the Jaguar so that we could listen to the conversations

of designated people while they were in that car.

It was only a question

of how we were going to intercept the conversations.

And so, we got an identical car.

And we started to work on the car.

These were really superb technicians.

They started taking it apart and putting the bug in various places,

then putting it back together again,

testing it out, taking it on the road, seeing where there was noise,

seeing where there was interference,

seeing where you could get the best quality.

And they determined somewhere behind the heater.

Once they knew where they wanted to put the bug,

now they started timing themselves.

And they did it again.

And then they did it again.

And then they did it again,

until they were satisfied

it was the fastest they could possibly do it.

The team was ready to bug the car.

Now, we just had to wait for the right opportunity.

One night, Avellino pulled his car into a location

where there was some event being conducted, and it was a rainy night.

He came late, which meant that the closer-in spots were taken.

So he had to park away from the building itself.

We followed them into the building.

Once we saw him go in,

we gave the signal for the tech team to go.

The opportunity was now.

Because it was raining, they carried plastic with them.

The door opened with the key that we got from Jaguar.

The plastic went in.

We didn't know whether or not the recording would actually work.

The first day that we followed the Jaguar was a learning process,

because most wiseguys, Mafia guys, they ride their rear view mirror.

They want to see what's behind them.

The van had the recording equipment,

monitor, and the whereforall to record all the conversations.

And if they would've seen a blue van too many times,

they're certain to feel: "Are we being followed?"

So we would have three or four chase cars,

all different makes, models, and colors.

And they had a piece of equipment in their car called a "repeater."

The would receive the signal being put out by the transmitter,

and that repeater would increase the power of the transmitter

to allow the van to be a little further away.

To keep the signal, the repeater car had to stay close.

When you're driving a car, the FBI was always on our mind.

You know, a lot of people drive real fast to see if they would follow,

if there's several cars following you.

Then there's guys that were a little smarter. They would tell me,

"What are you driving fast for? Drive slow."

If you drive real slow,

you're gonna notice them, 'cause they're driving real slow.

If they're gonna make a right-hand turn down a street,

you don't turn right behind them.

You lay back. You kind of sneak up

until he's into the next block and you kind of take a peek.

You're playin' hide and seek now.

Sometimes, you might get a couple of cars in between you and him.

That could cause a problem.

I'd think that we're too smart for them. It ain't gonna be me.

It'll be the next guy gettin' caught. I won't get caught.

So we would run red lights.

If he makes the red light and we don't...

Well, we don't wanna wash out the whole day.

So there were times when you might have to go up on the sidewalk

to get around cars that are stopped for a red light

and then carefully go through the red light.

Some take evasive action, such as going around the block two or three times.

Thank God Sal did not do it,

which made following him a little easier.

The bug was working.

It was like hearing a novel being read to you about the Mob.

Sal went away one time.

And when he came home from vacation and he went to start his car,

it didn't work.

Oh, shit!

We killed the battery, because the bug was wired to the battery.

So fortunately we had wiretaps on a couple of telephones.

And we heard Sal call the car company, complaining.

"I want you to come pick up the car and fix it once and for all."

So shit, how do we do this now?

We gotta disconnect the bug,

then they can do all the tests they want,

and they won't find it, because it won't be draining electricity.

A flatbed comes and drives away with the car.

We had a uniformed Suffolk County highway unit... stop the truck.

And as luck would have it, the driver of the tow truck

had a suspended driver's license.

So they got him away from his rig and over towards the police car,

which allowed one of our technicians to get into the Jaguar,

disconnect the bug,

and get out, all within about 45 seconds.

That presented problem number two.

How do we reconnect it?

About two days later,

Sal went to a meeting with Tony "Ducks" to a restaurant,

right off the Long Island Expressway.

They were sitting in the window, and they could see the parking lot.

We pulled the van in to block the view of the car.

We confirmed the bug was working

and off we went, and we were running again.

The recordings about the sanitation industry

on Long Island were very important.

Here, you're showing the influence, the control of the Mafia over an industry.

Total control over the industry.

And the money, the economic harm it was doing to commerce was astronomical.

They controlled the association. They controlled the union.

So they controlled the basic cost of picking up the garbage.

I own a store. I have to use this garbage guy.

I have no choice, and I have to pay him what he wants.

There is no competition.

If you don't cooperate with the Mob, you might get killed.

The sanitation men had reported to work before 6:00.

But then a quiet morning became violent when a gunman entered the office.

It was more than gold dust. This was gold nuggets.

The recordings that were being made could take down

the bosses of the Lucchese crime family.

In the mid-'80s, there came a time

when we would have as many as 25 bugs and wiretaps going in a given time.

What if you can't prove that he's a man of honor?

We're getting a great picture.

We were identifying those industries and unions

that had to be cleaned up.

We had developed a lot of evidence

against two of the Five Families,

but the Genovese family was the most important above all else.

They were the biggest Mafia family in the country.

If we were gonna take down the Mafia,

we have to get Fat Tony Salerno.

We started looking at Fat Tony in 1983.

From the perspective of the FBI, looking at the Genovese family,

Fat Tony Salerno was the ultimate target.

For the most part, while we were watching him,

he was at the Palma Boys Social Club on 115th Street in East Harlem,

which was a strong Italian enclave.

As a New Yorker,

you saw the heartbreak of people that were being targeted by organized crime.

Mom and pop people who were trying to make a go of it here were being shaken down.

I just saw the Mob as...

you know, vicious, vicious people who were praying on victims, you know.

So I took it personally, yeah, I did.

We would conduct surveillances just to see what Fat Tony's routine was.

He would come in every Monday morning.

And then he would go home every Thursday morning.

Those three days, he would spend in the Palma Boys Social Club.

If you've ever seen The Godfather

when Marlon Brando is at his daughter's wedding

and people are being shuttled in and shuttled out,

that was Tony Salerno.

He sat in that club, and neighbors would come in, and they would have issues

that they hoped that he would help.

Tony was like a god in the community.

He was like the fixer.

I'll tell you a Fat Tony story.

He sent for me one day, so I go see him in his social club.

He's sitting down, and he's got the cigar and the fedora.

And he says, "Michael, let me ask you something."

He says, "I got these five mamalukes around me. They can't earn five cents."

He says, "You give them a job?"

I said, "Yeah, I'll give them a job, Tony. Anything you want. You're the boss."

He said, "How much you gonna pay them every week?"

So I'm thinking about it. I don't wanna insult the boss.

I said, "Tony how about I give them 1,500 in cash a week?"

He looks at me and says, "1,500?"

Give them 500. Give me the 1,000."

I say, "Tony you got it. You're the boss. Whatever you want."

There was a presence about him that you just knew he was the guy in control.

What we determined through sources and informants

was that he was meeting with people from the various unions.

They were also discussing gambling, rackets, bribery, and family business.

That gave us some pretty good probable cause

to figure that we could get a court order for a bug.

It was going to be a very big day for this investigation.

We saw Tony "Ducks" Corallo...

walk into the Palma Boys Social Club.

Tony "Ducks" Corallo, the boss of the Lucchese family,

was meeting with Fat Tony Salerno, the boss of the Genovese family.

And we had this on tape.

All of a sudden, we're getting these nuggets of great conversations.

We started to realize there was much more interaction between the bosses

than we ever knew.

At one point the boss of the Buffalo family came to see Fat Tony

and was describing the conflict within the family, and Fat Tony told him,

"Well, you go back and tell your people

that Tony said this is coming from the Commission."

The Commission was something that informants had talked about for years

and said that they controlled what the organized crime families did

and how they worked.

From what we were hearing on the bugs,

we were getting a much better picture of what the Commission was and what it did

than we had ever done before.

We learned the Commission was made up

of the bosses of the Five Families in New York.

They were there to set up the rules

for all the families all across the country,

because disputes are bad for business.

And the Commission was in the position to settle disputes or to...

order that somebody be killed to settle a dispute.

The conversations showed that the five bosses in the Commission

had a tremendous control of a lot of different industries

and legitimate businesses.

And then, not only that, the bosses were in business together.

A lot of times, different families

work with each other, depending on what the situation is.

If it's something that the Commission of the Mob agrees on,

they'll send somebody from any of the families or jointly.

It's a collaboration of making money, is what the street's about.

It's not about fighting each other.

It's not about killin' each other.

At the end of the day, it's about making a dollar together.

The idea of the existence of the Commission was a big deal

because it puts all the bosses of the family

into the same criminal conspiracy.

It became more and more apparent

that this is really where we should focus our efforts.

It's high noon Sunday, and I'm Gabe Pressman.

Just one year ago, Rudolph Giuliani

was appointed US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

It's been called the most prestigious prosecutor's job in the United States.

Giuliani has been described as a man with a passion...

I am an Italian-American.

I was born in New York City. I grew up in Brooklyn.

I was a tough kid. I was a boxer. I was taught not to be afraid of anything.

Could have I ended up a wiseguy?

Sure, I could have.

But in the '70s, I became an assistant US attorney.

And when the position of US Attorney of the Southern District opened up...

that was my dream job.

I got to see everything the FBI were doing about organized crime.

And I realized they were being much more successful.

They had a much better picture of organized crime.

I always hated the Mafia.

They do terrible things to society.

They began by exploiting Italian immigrants...

like my grandfathers.

One was a barber. The other was a tailor.

And the minute they established a little business and made a little money,

they'd come in and say, "Give us 30%."

And you'd say, "No. Why do I give you 30%?"

"'Cause we're gonna burn you down if you don't give us 30.

We're gonna beat you up or beat up your kid."

When I began the position of US Attorney,

I was reading all the files I could about the Mafia cases.

I got to this section about the Commission.

The Commission is the executive board of the Mafia.

They're the highest body that governs the Mafia in New York.

It's run like a business. It's like a board meeting.

So I envisioned the idea of using RICO

to go after the bosses of all these families in one very big case:

The Commission Case.

If you can kill the monster from the head,

this is our one chance to do it.

The US Attorney's Office has 150 lawyers. They're all excellent.

You've got about ten that are...

really superstars.

Mike Chertoff is one of those ten.

My unit chief said, "You know, Rudy Giuliani has this idea

of prosecuting the board of directors of the Mafia.

And he would like you to work as his deputy."

I'd been in the US Prosecutor's Office for probably less than a year.

I was, by any measure, still a baby prosecutor.

No question it was gonna be a baptism of fire.

I would be the lead prosecutor

with the other two members of the trial team,

John Savarese and Gil Childers.

For me, coming from an Italian-American heritage,

the dark side of that immigrant history that the Mafia represents

was a horrible stain.

And it was definitely part of my own personal motivation

for wanting to work on this case.

When I was asked to do this,

I had just turned 29.

It was quite a vote of confidence in us,

but quite honestly, mostly in Mike and John.

The two of them had intellectual candlepower that could light the city.

Rudy Giuliani really deserves credit

for coming up with the idea

of bringing a commission case that would sit atop

these Five Family cases that were also being brought.

It was really his brainstorm.

He wanted to use RICO in a way that had never been used before.

I mean, this was probably the biggest organized crime case ever.

The question was "could we find the evidence to make that case?"

The boss asked me to come to his office

and said, "I got a case for you.

We want to indict all of the bosses

of the five organized crime families in New York at the same time."

I said, "What, are you shitting me? You want what?"

I mean, you're talking about a major operation,

all the bosses of all five families.

And I wasn't sure how we were gonna do it.

To make a RICO case, you've gotta show

that it's an independent enterprise,

that there is this thing called the Commission.

My agents went to every squad

and got transcripts of every wiretap, every bug.

Was the Commission mentioned?

How was it mentioned?

What contacts between who?

And then... what did they discuss?

You got to show that these individuals are connected to it,

they want to be part of it, and they're lending their effort to it.

Second, you got to connect it to a series of underlying crimes.

So what were those crimes?

What really proved critical was the investigation

of the Casa Storta restaurant.

I had been charged with getting a bug

in the Casa Storta restaurant...

the meeting place for the Colombo family.

But they found the first bug.

So we had to have the entry team get back in there, reconnect the wires,

hide them a little better than the last time,

and do it all... start all over again.

And we started getting conversations that had some value to the Commission case.

You're hearing references to Paul Castellano,

boss of the Gambino family,

references to Tony "Ducks."

Tony "Ducks" Corallo, he's the boss of the Lucchese family.

You're hearing references to Fat Tony Salerno,

boss of the Genovese family.

And then I hear, they're throwing out all these other names.

North Berry, S&A, X.I.O.

What was that?

And they were using these names

in the context of various intersections in Manhattan.

Thirty-fourth and First.

York Avenue.

We had no idea what they were talking about.

We knew it was important, because they're talking about the bosses of the family.

North Berry, S&A, X.I.O.

My boss picks up the phone book.

He looks up X.I.O. He looks up North Berry.

He said, "These are all construction companies,

and they're all in the cement business."

He said, "This is unbelievable. He says, "This is the concrete industry.

This is construction in Manhattan."

So we went out to 34th and 1st.

Saw that it was an enormous construction project,

a giant hole in the ground.

It's gonna be huge.

This is multimillion dollars. This is big leagues.

So we know then we're onto something big.

Construction in Manhattan at that time was mind-boggling.

There was buildings going up almost on every block.

The city was offering tax incentives for construction.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of construction underway

at any given time.

This game was making the Mob tens of millions of dollars on one job.

And there was 50 jobs.

The complexity of the conspiracy was stunning.

We're literally talking a billion-dollar operation.

But once we figured it out,

then we were able to bring a case against the Commission itself.