Original subtitles

DEVECCHIO: Greg Scarpa was

a well-respected and feared member of the Colombo family.

He'd done a lot of work for the family - work-meaning hits.

A limousine driver

used to take his daughter to school,

and there was a point in time when the limo driver tried

to assault his daughter.

And Scarpa, he went out and gave the guy a pretty

sound beating. And it wasn't enough for him.

Shortly thereafter the limo driver was

shot to death and his body was dumped on one of the streets

of Brooklyn.

Now, one day I ask him, I say, there was a body

found in Brooklyn on such and such a street, and he smiled.

He didn't say anything, but the smile told me he did the work;

he knew I knew he did the work.

None of my top echelon informants would ever tell me

that they committed a murder.

Indicate to me, maybe? Yes.

Tell me they did it? No. So if you

want the information on that secret society how else are you

going to get it if you don't talk to killers,

people that are criminals, there's no way you're going

to get that information.

I mean, you're going to get it from what, your priest?

Your rabbi? Local deli guy? That's not happening.

NARRATOR: IT'S THE EARLY 1980S.

THE SECRET SOCIETY KNOWN AS LA COSA NOSTRA REMAINS THE MOST

POWERFUL ORGANIZED CRIME FORCE IN THE COUNTRY,

UNTOUCHED BY THE LAW.

MOB BOSSES BRAZENLY GUN DOWN THEIR OWN MEMBERS INCLUDING

OTHER BOSSES IN THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY.

JOE COLOMBO, JOE GALLO, CARMINE GALANTE, SONNY BLACK NAPOLITANO,

SONNY RED INDELICATO.

SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE.

GIULIANI: This is not just a group of individual criminals,

not just individual crimes. It's not even just a conspiracy.

This is a long-term, 30, 40, 50 year old organized business.

And the business is committing murder, committing extortion,

committing gambling

But I always thought there were delusions of grandeur with these

people. Garbage. It's a really bad organization.

And let's expose it and get rid of it.

NARRATOR: THESE MEN ARE WITNESSES TO THAT SECRET

HISTORY, STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOWS TO TELL THEIR STORIES

FIRSTHAND.

SOME REMAIN CONCEALED FOR PERSONAL SAFETY,

FEARFUL OF AN ORGANIZATION THAT HAS NEVER TRULY BEEN BROUGHT

TO JUSTICE.

BUT THE ARRIVAL OF THIS AMBITIOUS YOUNG PROSECUTOR,

RUDOLPH GIULIANI, IN THE 1980S, MARKS THE BEGINNING OF A CRUSADE

THAT WOULD SHAKE THE MAFIA TO ITS CORE.

HE KNOWS THE MOB FIRST HAND FROM THE STREETS OF BROOKLYN.

GIULIANI: My father

would describe anybody who operated in a gang as a bully.

If you need 2 or 3 men to fight your battles you're not a real

man, my father- a real man can fight his own battles.

NARRATOR: BY THE TIME HE BECOMES THE U.S. ATTORNEY

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK IN 1983,

GIULIANI SEES THE MAFIA AS HIS BATTLE.

GIULIANI: It was very, very helpful that Italian American

was doing this.

I realized that I could play a unique role;

that my name helped to be able to deal with this more honestly.

I thought I could just say the truth, there is a mafia,

it does exist,

Italian Americans are the exclusive members of it,

it's a disgrace to Italian Americans,

it's a disgrace to America,

and the best thing for us to do is wipe it out.

No criminal organization in the history of our country

has ever infiltrated legitimate institutions of society,

including our political institutions,

the way the mafia was able to do.

This was tremendous power.

NARRATOR: IN ORDER TO BRING DOWN THAT POWER,

GIULIANI MUST TARGET THE LEADERSHIP OF THE MAFIA

A HANDFUL OF MEN KNOWN COLLECTIVELY AS THE COMMISSION,

THE BOSSES OF THE FIVE NEW YORK CRIME FAMILIES: GAMBINO,

COLOMBO, BONANNO, GENOVESE, AND LUCCHESE.

GIULIANI: The New York commission truly governed

the five families in New York City

and had very specific powers.

LEONETTI: The commission is like our supreme court.

CHERTOFF: It's like the board of directors of a company.

WALDEN: The commission was the body that was supposed

to resolve all disputes among the five families,

settle grievances, decide whether to authorize murders

and divide the booty. I think it's fair

to say that they were trying to keep the peace.

GIULIANI: If the Bonanno family wanted to kill somebody

in the Genovese family

then that had to go to the commission,

and there had to be a vote on it.

It was a business.

NARRATOR: KEY TO THAT BUSINESS IS A CODE OF SILENCE,

A CODE THAT HAS BEEN IN PLACE FOR FIVE DECADES.

BUT IN 1983, THE LEGENDARY RETIRED BOSS OF THE BONANNO

FAMILY, JOE BONANNO, FLAGRANTLY BREAKS THAT TRADITION

AND PUBLISHES THIS TELL-ALL BOOK, MAN OF HONOR.

GIULIANI READS THAT BOOK AND RECOGNIZES INSTANTLY WHAT

BONANNO HAS GIVEN HIM - AN UNINTENDED ROADMAP TO THE INNER

WORKINGS OF THE COMMISSION.

GIULIANI: It was a Saturday afternoon I'll never forget it

and I was reading Joe Bonanno's book.

Thought it was really strange he would write this book

because he had an awful lot of information in it.

GOLDSTOCK: You have Joe Bonanno, one of the heads of the original

families, calling himself a man of honour and discussing the mob

in the book.

CHERTOFF: Bonanno's book Man of Honour actually lays out

the history of the mob.

It goes way back over the decades.

GIULIANI: And as I'm reading it all of a sudden it just snapped

in my mind.

He is describing a perfect RICO enterprise.

NARRATOR: RICO. A LAW THAT'S BEEN ON THE BOOKS SINCE 1970,

AND WILL BECOME GIULIANI'S MOST POWERFUL WEAPON

IN THE GOVERNMENT'S FIGHT AGAINST THE MAFIA.

IT STANDS FOR RACKETEER INFLUENCED CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS

AND AT THE HEART OF THIS STATUTE IS AN ELEGANTLY SIMPLE IDEA.

TAKING ON THE MOB ISN'T ABOUT TAKING DOWN ONE CRIMINAL,

IT'S ABOUT TARGETING THE ENTIRE ENTERPRISE.

BLAKEY:Organized crime is a group.

Some of them are out doing the bad activity,

some of them are on trial, some of them are in prison,

and some of them are being recruited.

It's a merry go round, and if all you do is take individuals

off the merry go round, you have no impact on the merry go round.

NARRATOR: THE TERM 'RACKETEERING' IS A CATCHALL

THAT DESCRIBES ALL OF THE MOB'S ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES,

FROM EXTORTION AND LOANSHARKING TO UNION INFILTRATION

AND MURDER.

BUT RATHER THAN TYING THESE CRIMES TO AN INDIVIDUAL MOBSTER,

RICO TIES THEM TO A CORRUPT ORGANIZATION - IN THIS CASE,

AN ORGANIZED CRIME FAMILY.

IF PROSECUTORS CAN PROVE THE HEAD OF THIS ORGANIZATION THE

BOSS OF THE FAMILY IS AWARE OF AND SANCTIONS THE STREET-LEVEL

CRIMES, THEY'LL FINALLY HAVE THE ABILITY TO GO AFTER HIM.

GIULIANI: You don't just put them in jail

you take their property away from them.

You take away from them their bank accounts,

you take away from them the restaurants they own,

you take away from them the unions they control.

BLAKEY:RICO was

a major change in how you tried cases and thought about cases.

GOLDSTOCK: Investigators can start thinking about

for the first time,

what the organization looked like, how it was structured,

who ran it, who conducted what criminal activities and then tie

all those criminal activities

together in one indictment.

RAAB: For the first time if you proved that a boss knew anything

about this ongoing enterprise

they could get a life sentence.

NARRATOR: ALTHOUGH RICO'S BEEN ON THE BOOK FOR OVER A DECADE,

NO ONE FIGURES OUT HOW TO USE IT

AGAINST THE MAFIA UNTIL GIULIANI READS JOE BONANNO'S TELL ALL

BOOK.

GIULIANI: I'm reading it, you've got this big chart,

and it shows the succession of the commission.

What we should do is

we should take that chart, which ended about 1966.

And then we should take it and we should bring it to 1983

and we should fill in the line of succession.

If we fill in the line of succession

I now have a perfect racketeering case.

NARRATOR: BUT TO FILL IN THAT 17-YEAR GAP AND GO AFTER

THE COMMISSION, GIULIANI MUST FIRST BUILD AN ELITE TEAM,

STARTING WITH THIS PROSECUTOR.

CHERTOFF: I was approached about working with Giuliani on putting

together a case. And it was going to be

focused on the bosses of the five La Cosa Nostra families

that dominate the mafia in the United States of America.

GIULIANI: Michael was a young new assistant U.S. Attorney

We went down to Washington,

we asked to meet with the Attorney General and

the Director of the FBI, Bill West. We went down there.

and gave him a briefing.

We made this big chart.

This is the evidence we have now,

and these are the things we have to fill in.

YOUNG GIULIANI: This club is in Manhattan...

GIULIANI: So we had a plan for how we were gonna do that.

If we take out the commission of the mafia,

we blow a hole right in their heart. And it was a

case frankly that a lot of people thought we couldn't win.

GIULIANI: I'm going to need 50 or 60 more agents.

I'm gonna need more resources.

I'm gonna need really good tech people,

and they may have to come over from the national security side.

NARRATOR: HIS PLAN IS TO STRIKE THE HEAD OF THE BEAST,

THE COMMISSION, THE MAFIA'S RULING BODY,

WHICH PRESIDES OVER AN ARMY OF VIOLENT GANGSTERS.

STEP ONE: FIND OUT HOW THE ORGANIZATION REALLY WORKS.

KOSSLER: We reorganized the office so that we would be able

to investigate specifically one family at a time.

NARRATOR: EVEN WITH THE REORGANIZATION,

INFORMATION ABOUT THE LEADERSHIP IS HARD TO COME BY.

BUT THE FEDS DO HAVE ONE ACE UP THEIR SLEEVE - THE INTEL GLEANED

BY FBI AGENT JOE PISTONE DURING HIS FOUR YEAR INFILTRAION

OF THE BONANNO FAMILY UNDER THE ALIAS DONNIE BRASCO.

HIS INSIDE KNOWLEDGE PROVIDES LAW ENFORCEMENT WITH ITS FIRST

DETAILED BLUEPRINT OF COSA NOSTRA.

GIULIANI: Pistone's infiltration was a massive breakthrough

in terms of gathering names,

identities, who really controls what area.

Some guy that you might suspect was a big deal

because he was acting like a big deal really wasn't.

Some other guy really was the guy calling the shots.

JOHN MARKS: Pistone gave you that?

GIULIANI: Pistone gave us a real leg up on that.

He broke the mystique that you couldn't infiltrate the mafia.

That mystique was very, very important in getting people

to cooperate.

It makes the hand shake a little.

And it gives you a chance to start turning them,

getting more information.

NARRATOR: THIS LEADS TO STEP TWO IN GIULIANI'S PROSECUTION

OF THE COMMISSION: FLIPPING MADE MEMBERS OF THE MOB TO BECOME

PAID INFORMANTS FOR THE GOVERNMENT.

FAT SAL: The most powerful tool that the government has against

organized crime

is a cooperating witness. A rat.

MCDONALD: And their motivation for doing that is, I guess,

three fold. One, to get money.

Two, to curry favor with the investigators.

And three, to enhance their own positions of power in organized

crime because they're only gonna give information up against

their rivals.

GIULIANI: Law enforcement work requires infiltration.

You can't do all of it through bugs.

Because you don't know what to wiretap,

you don't know what to bug.

So that's why informants, they are the key.

NARRATOR: AND ONE FBI AGENT IS PARTICULARLY SUCCESSFUL

AT TURNING MOBSTERS INTO INFORMANTS; THIS MAN,

FBI AGENT LIN DEVECCHIO.

JOHN MARKS: What would be the opening conversation with a guy

like this? What's the way in?

DEVECCHIO: Well, what you wanna do is to find him alone.

You put him under surveillance and you see where he goes.

And when you catch him alone somewhere,

you stop him and talk to him.

That's how we developed Gregory Scarpa.

NARRATOR: THAT INFORMANT, GREGORY SCARPA,

WILL BECOME ARGUABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL PAID INFORMANTS

IN THE CASE AGAINST THE COMMISSION,

AND THE CORNERSTONE IN GIULIANI'S COMING WAR.

FAT SAL: Greg Scarpa Sr., Grim Reaper nobody called him that

to his face, you know what I mean, he was called Greg,

but behind his back he was the Grim Reaper.

That was his nickname because he was so vicious.

I was in the credit card business with Greg Scarpa.

I would sit down and talk to him everyday and he would give me

pointers where to go and use the credit cards.

That's the type of guy he was. He was a mad hatter.

God knows how many people he killed.

He smiled at ya, stick a knife right in your neck.

But he'd smile at you while he's doing it.

Real friendly guy.

CALANDRA: Greg Scarpa, he was, he was a monster,

he was a mad dog in the neighbourhood.

If he was walking on the same side as my sidewalk back

in the day, I'd probably cross the street.

That guy killed everything. Women, children...

he killed everything.

DEVECCHIO: He'd previously been an information for an agent

by the name of Tony Valano and had been

closed for a number of years.

And I figured, he was an informant before,

maybe he'll talk again.

And I knew where he lived. And I went out there one day

and parked my car and I waited about half an hour

just to see if anybody else was coming by.

If there were any wise guys going to his house I would have

gone back to the office.

I saw him come out of the house.

And I got out of my car... and basically he said.

He says, what the xxxx do you want?

And you know, it's a good opening.

And I told him, I said, my name's Lin Devecchio,

I'm an FBI agent. SCARPA: Yeah, and...?

DEVECCHIO: And I said to him, I need an education.

I need a schooling in the life.

I was a good friend of Tony Vilano's.

He told me before he died if you ever need help from a guy,

go see Greg.

Tony never told me that but that's what I told Scarpa.

And he said to me Let me think about.

Do you have a number where I can reach you?

I gave him a confidential number.

About two weeks later he called me.

He said, Do you know who this is?

I said, Yeah I know who this is.

He said, Meet me at my house tomorrow at 10 o'clock,

come alone.

And a relationship started from there.

NARRATOR: SOON SCARPA STARTS TO DELIVER THE GOODS.

ONE OF HIS FIRST TIPS TURNS OUT TO BE ACCURATE AND GRUESOME.

THE LOCATION OF BURIED BODIES, MOB MURDER VICTIMS.

DEVECCHIO: The body that we exhumed in a social club

in Brooklyn was Dominic Scialo,

nicknamed Mimi Scialo, was the victim.

Greg Scarpa, he didn't do that work to the best of our

knowledge but he provided the names of the guys that

did and where the body was buried.

Mimi's body was buried in a shower curtain in the basement

under on a dirt floor. And actually below that,

below him, there was another body that had been there for

years and years and I'm not sure the medical examiner ever

identified that body.

NARRATOR: THE BODIES CONFIRMS SCARPA'S VALUE TO THE FBI.

DEVECCHIO: He'd keep us updated. Anytime somebody got made,

somebody died, who was loansharking, who was gambling.

He had information on all five families.

NARRATOR: SCARPA'S TIPS LEAD TO THE NEXT STEP IN GIULIANI'S

CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE COMMISSION.

GIULIANI: The ability to do wire taps and bugs,

without the informants that the FBI developed on the inside we

couldn't have done the wiretaps, we couldn't have done the bugs.

I mean, that was vital.

NARRATOR: THE FIRST TARGET IN THE ELECTRONIC ASSAULT,

THE LUCCHESE CRIME FAMILY, BASED IN HARLEM.

THEY HAVE A CONTROLLING INTEREST IN THE NEW YORK GARBAGE INDUSTRY

TO THE TUNE OF MILLIONS

THEIR BOSS IS THIS GUY OLD SCHOOL GANGSTER

TONY DUCKS CORALLO

MCDONALD: Tony Ducks Corallo ran that family

for many years.

RAAB: He was arrested often and somehow

He managed to beat all these raps.

He ducks everything. It's Tony Ducks.

NARRATOR: BUT TONY DUCKS HAS A WEAKNESS,

A SPECIAL FONDNESS FOR AN EXPENSIVE SET OF WHEELS,

HIS JAGUAR,

A TIP GIVEN TO THE FBI BY NONE OTHER THAN GREGORY SCARPA.

DEVECCHIO: I had asked Scarpa about

where do they discuss things? And he happened to mention

they talk about it in the Jaguar.

MCDONALD: He was chauffeured around by a fellow by the name

of Avellino.

GOLDSTOCK: We knew if we could get a bug in the car,

there was no place for them to go,

the conversations would be studio quality.

It gave us a unique opportunity.

DEVECCHIO: Scarpa furnished the probable cause

for a judge to sign off on a Title III,

an electronic intercept, to put in that car.

GOLDSTOCK: Because we had physical surveillance on

Avellino in the car for such a long period of time,

we knew that it would be very difficult to do this.

He was never far away from the car,

and it would have been virtually impossible to do it where

he parked the car at night.

And so there was a short period of time,

we had to get it right the first time.

We didn't want to be caught.

if we were, we would never have the opportunity again.

TECH AGENT: You gotta connect the transmitter...

GOLDSTOCK: And the tech unit really practiced for this.

They got a car that was the same,

and then we essentially took it apart to figure out where

we would get the best recording

They had to figure out how to get off

the dashboard, how to install it, how to connect it.

TECH AGENT: Mount the transmitter right on the bottom,

he won't see anything...

GOLDSTOCK: And then they started to time themselves.

So there would be practice runs, literally

using a stopwatch.

TECH AGENT: Make sure you pull those wires out,

make that connection real good.

GOLDSTOCK: Installing it, connecting it to the battery,

reinstalling everything, getting out, and not

leaving anything behind AGENT: How you doing in there?

Good, good... You got it?

And then, once we got it down to the time, we now looked for the

opportunity to put it in.

NARRATOR: IT'S MARCH, 1983,

AND FBI AGENTS ARE POISED FOR ACTION,

RIGHT MOMENT TO PLANT A BUG INSIDE THE JAGUAR OF LUCCHESE

FAMILY BOSS AND TONY DUCKS CORALLO.

GOLDSTOCK: We saw him pull in,

we saw where he parked, we saw him go into the location,

and then the tech unit began to do its thing.

And then they went in. the stopwatch went again.

They had plastic because they had to make sure that no drop

of rain got into the car.

And the pressure was not only getting the bug in on time,

but ensuring that there was no indication that they had

ever been there.

And we started instantaneously getting terrific recordings.

AUDIO RECORDING: We have to think about it.

That the life was good enough for you.

If we really believe in it, why wouldn't we want our son.

If I were a doctor I would be saying to my son

since he's a little kid you're gonna be a doctor.

Or if I was a lawyer I would be looking for my son to be

a lawyer.

So they must feel that if this life is good enough for me,

I still want it for my son.

Otherwise, we're really saying that this xxxx life is no

xxxx good. It's for the birds. Right?

GOLDSTOCK: Within a day or two, Corallo was in the car saying

that he was the boss of the family.

NARRATOR: TOM MIX SANTORO IS ALSO IN THE JAGUAR TALKING.

HE'S THE UNDERBOSS OF THE LUCCHESE FAMILY,

AND THE TALK IS ALL ABOUT COMMISSION BUSINESS.

SANTORO: Okay. So in the next ten days he will be the Boss of

the Family, but he can't sit on the Commission.

CHERTOFF: So you get a complete picture of what the Lucchese

family is doing.

NARRATOR: BUT THE LUCCHESE FAMILY IS ONLY ONE OF THREE KEY

TARGETS IN THE COMMISSION CASE - PROSECUTOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI'S

EFFORT TO DISMANTLE ALL FIVE OF THE NEW YORK MAFIA'S FAMILIES.

ANOTHER, THE GENOVESE FAMILY.

AND THE FACE OF THE GENOVESE IS THIS GUY, FAT TONY SALERNO.

KALLSTROM: Fat Tony Salerno was- was quite a character.

Very, very powerful guy.

Reporter: Do you have something to say, Tony?

Tony: Yes, go xxxx yourself. Reporter: Thank you.

RAAB: He was recruited at an early age as a little tough kid,

a knee breaker, a jawbreaker.

NARRATOR: THE GENOVESE ARE MAJOR PLAYERS IN THE PORTS,

GARBAGE HAULING, AND LABOR UNIONS,

AND YET THEIR HEADQUARTERS IS THIS DIVE IN HARLEM,

FAT TONY SALERNO'S DOWN AND DIRTY HOME BASE,

NOW AN FBI TARGET

KALLSTROM: He had this grungy, beat up

candy store slash club up in East Harlem.

GIULIANI: So Fat Tony would come down to his social club

in East Harlem.

However, when he left, he would always leave his social club

guarded 24 hours a day. Day and night.

NARRATOR: SO THE FEDS JUST CAN'T GO IN THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR.

KALLSTROM: On either side of the street, you know,

there's four story buildings.

and who knows who's looking out these windows.

And you gotta go up to the front door and you gotta go through

the lock.

GIULIANI: Finally, over a Thanksgiving

weekend, Fat Tony, out of the goodness of his heart

let his men off.

NARRATOR: BUT THE FBI STILL NEEDS TO OVERCOME A MAJOR

OBSTACLE: GETTING INSIDE.

KALLSTROM: We had to get underneath the club.

It was a filthy basement.

One of my best technical agents, John Kravek

Crawled his way into the basement.

It was dark and muddy down there and who knew what was in there.

You know, you're operating with red light Pen lights.

And they were drilling a hole up through the floor to get into

Tony's little candy store.

There were rats in that basement the size of cats.

And I'll never forget John calling me on the radio

I was out in the command car

cause one of these rats bit him in the back of the ankle.

But we got away with it.

GIULIANI: They were able to get in, wire the whole place.

And it was a gold mine.

NARRATOR: THE FBI NOW HAVE BUGS PLANTED IN THE JAGUAR OF

LUCCHESE BOSS TONY DUCKS CORALLO AND THE SOCIAL CLUB OF GENOVESE

BOSS FAT TONY SALERNO.

JUST TWO IN A GROWING NETWORK OF SURVEILLANCE BLANKETING THE MOB

NEW YORK CITY.

Wiretap: This is what I'm looking for you see?

Let's designate somebody for that office.

Do you follow what I'm bringing at? Yeah.

We want to put a delegate. Then it's our xxxx union.

Not that's its Jimmy Brown's union.

Not that it's Paul Castellano's Union.

It's theirs and ours. Now, let's take somebody.

Let's take a son, a son-in-law, somebody put them into

the office.

They got a job, let's take somebody's daughter, whatever,

she's the secretary. Let's staff it with our people.

KOSSLER: We have 25 wiretaps or microphones, and we have

200 agents in the New York office and we also had 100

detectives from the NYPD.

So, at any one given time we had over 300 and some investigators

working on these matters.

NARRATOR: BUT THE MOST CHALLENGING TARGET OF ALL

IS THE GAMBINO FAMILY AND ITS BOSS, BIG PAUL CASTELLANO,

WHO ASPIRES TO BE THE BOSS OF ALL BOSSES

MCDONALD: The most powerful family was the Gambino crime

family. Paul Castellano was the boss of the family in 1982.

POLISI: You know, he was at the top of the family and all that

money was being kicked up to the boss and he got a piece of it.

RAAB: He was a brother-in-law and cousin of one

very powerful man, Carlo Gambino,

for whom the family was named.

MCDONALD: He was a very sophisticated,

almost businesslike boss.

FAT SAL: Paul Castellano, he wasn't really a mobster,

he was more of a businessman.

If it had to do with money he'd probably sell out

the whole family.

FRANZESE: Paul Castellano was not a guy

that was spoken very well about: you know,

he was a legitimate guy, he had no business being boss,

you know, he backed in through his relationship

with Carlo Gambino... so we always heard that stuff.

POLISI: He was never a tough guy.

He was just a guy who just fell into it.

NARRATOR: CASTELLANO MAY BE DESPISED BY SOME GUYS IN THE

LIFE, BUT HE HAS A HUGE EGO AND THE REAL ESTATE TO MATCH.

KALLSTROM: Paul Castellano had this

big mansion out on Staten Island.

Paul's mansion was called the White House and he tried to run

the family from the house.

RAAB: Now here he builds himself

this mansion, which he deliberately names The White

House because he passes the word along that he is as important

a sovereign, a leader, as the President of the Unites States!

NARRATOR: THE ONLY WAY FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT TO GET INSIDE

THE WHITE HOUSE IS ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE.

MCDONALD: Bruce Mouw was the head of the Gambino squad

and it was Mouw

who came to us and said let's see if we can get a bug into

Paul Castellano's home. They knew from their informants,

they knew from their physical surveillance that many

significant players in the Gambino family and indeed

other families were going up to the hill to meet

with Castellano.

KALLSTROM: That was a fortress that place,

with locks and alarms and cleaning people coming

and going.

It was virtually never empty.

We spent weeks trying to figure out when the best opportunity

was, and there really wasn't a good opportunity.

WIRETAP: I can give you guys a half a million dollars a year

without a problem...

NARRATOR: IN 1983, THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, LED BY U.S.

ATTORNEY RUDOLPH GIULIANI, LAUNCHES AN ALL OUT ASSAULT ON

THE RULING BODY OF THE AMERICAN MOB KNOWN AS THE COMMISSION.

NOW COMES THE BIGGEST ELECTRONIC COUP OF THEM ALL.

THE FBI PLANTS A BUG AT THE HEART OF THE BEAST,

INSIDE THE IMPENETRABLE WHITE HOUSE OF GAMBINO FAMILY BOSS,

BIG PAUL CASTELLANO.

KALLSTROM: We basically put the microphone in right in front

of 'em.

You can only imagine how we did that because I'm not gonna

tell you.

NARRATOR: BUT SOME SAY THIS IS HOW THEY DID IT.

RAAB: They damaged, from the outside, his cable TV

and they sent over somebody, two agents masquerading as

technicians to repair his cable TV.

They bugged his telephone and they planted bugs

in the baseboards of his rooms.

MCDONALD: I went over to the FBI site

where they we doing the monitoring of Paul Castellano's

house when we put the bug in there and it was the first day

we were up and I said wow, this is going to be incredible.

I'm going to hear them talking about planning murders

and controlling labor unions.

And what did I hear?

They were talking about what was better, Beck's or Heineken.

What they had for dinner last night.

Where they were going to go for dinner

the next night.

Paul Castellano was constantly talking about his grandchildren.

And then they hit a gold mine, then they'd get stuff that was

really significant, and they'd get Castellano talking about how

they control the garment centre and how they were involved

in all sorts

of significant racketeering activity.

GIULIANI: At that point now we had three or four simultaneous

bugs:

Corallo's Jaguar, Castellano's study,

And Fat Tony's social club.

WIRETAP: We should make some examples.

Other people ain't like us, they talk about it...

NARRATOR: AND WITH THE HELP OF THOSE BUGS,

ALL THE PIECES OF THE COMMISSION CASE START COMING TOGETHER.

CHERTOFF: So you'll get one version in the Jaguar and other

version in the social club and you put them together and that

gives you a kind of a multifaceted

view of a particular criminal activity.

NARRATOR: THE BUGS OFFER UNMISTAKABLE PROOF OF THE EXTENT

OF MAFIA COMMISSION POWER.

GIULIANI: The tape recordings

has them planning murders, dividing up routes for

garbage collection, dividing up restaurants,

dividing up the garment industry.

All of this was on tape.

GOLDSTOCK: We now knew

the entire structure of the family.

We were working with the Senate Judiciary Committee that was

doing an investigation of organized crime at the top.

And we gave them essentially an organizational chart.

There was testimony at the congressional hearing about this

and it was reported in the New York Post the following day.

Corallo was having a conversation with Avellino,

looking at the paper, he said, you know,

for the first time they got it right, how do they know this?

And in effect what he did was say,

This is the structure of the family.

NARRATOR: WORDS CAUGHT ON TAPE ARE ONE PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE

OF THE COMMISSION BUT PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE WOULD BE

EVEN BETTER.

BRUCE MOUW'S GAMBINO SQAUD GETS THE ULTIMATE TIP.

THE BOSSES ARE GATHERING FOR A SITDOWN,

OFFICIAL COMMISSION BUSINESS.

MOUW: We got word of a meeting in Staten Island.

NARRATOR: TWO OF MOUW'S AGENTS STAKE OUT THE LOCATION OF THE

ALLEGED COMMISSION MEETING AND BEFORE LONG THE BOSSES BEGIN

TO APPEAR ONE BY ONE.

BIG PAUL CASTELLANO.

TOM MIX SANTORO. FAT TONY SOLERNO.

AND THE STREET BOSS REPRESENTING THE COLOMBO FAMILY WHOSE BOSS

IS ALREADY IN JAIL.

MOUW: It was prime evidence of showing

There is a commission, here these guys are.

They're meeting at this house surreptitiously and we got them

on film.

NARRATOR: ON TAPE, THE MOBSTERS OF THE FIVE FAMILIES NOW CONFIRM

WHAT JOE BONANNO HAS WRITTEN IN HIS TELL-ALL BOOK AND NOW EVEN

MORE INCREDIBLY, HE GOES ON TELEVISION.

WALLACE: One of the most infamous crime bosses

of all time, Joseph Bonanno, agreed to sit down with us.

The commission, they sit around and say, ok,

that man's going to go. We're not going to do it.

BONANNO: No, the commission would never say that,

the commission is nothing to do with, to do this.

WALLACE: I'm wrong?

CHERTOFF: When he went on 60 Minutes,

and he talked about the structure of the mafia and the

structure of The Commission, the mobsters watched it,

and we actually had recorded conversations

where Corallo and Santoro, and they would say did you see

the 60 Minutes show?

And did you see what Bonanno said?

And then they would say

well, he lied about this but he told the truth about this,

and this is right and that's wrong.

He was even saying there was a commission!

He was admitting that there was a commission.

He did.

And uh, five bosses of New York.

On the TV, he didn't call it, he just said I'm a father of

a family.

CHERTOFF: We were actually able to

then use some of what Bonanno said against these mobsters

because they had incorporated his television appearance into

their own conversation.

NARRATOR: IT'S A LANDMARK PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT ESTABLISHES

ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT THE COMMISSION EXISTS.

MEANWHILE THE WIRETAPS AND BUGS ARE MAKING CLEAR

THAT THE COMMISSION BOSSES HAVE THER DIFFERENCES.

GIULIANI: So these guys would finish a meeting

of the Commission and they'd go back to their various haunts,

right?

Corallo would get back into the Jaguar immediately and he'd tell

his driver

We had a rough meeting today.

Fat Tony was being a jerk, he's always a jerk.

Remember that vote two years ago?

That came up again that vote to kill so and so two years ago.

Persico's still complaining.

He voted against it and everyone else voted for it,

what a mistake that was.

Then you would get Castellano's version of that when he'd return

home to his study.

He'd bring all his men in and he'd say That idiot Corallo's

objecting, he's bringing up that murder of two years ago,

who wants to talk about that damn murder of two years ago?

NARRATOR: BUT NOW THE US ATTORNEY FROM BROOKLYN MUST

PROVE HIS CASE AGAINST THE CORE LEADERSHIP OF THE AMERICAN MOB

IN COURT, SOMETHING NO PROSECUTOR HAS EVER DONE.

IT'S 1985, AND AFTER A 2-YEAR CAMPAIGN OF ELECTRONIC

SURVEILLANCE AND EAVESDROPPING ON THE MAFIA'S BIG FAMILIES

U.S. ATTORNEY RUDY GIULIANI IS READY STRIKE.

HE'S SET TO TAKE HIS CASE AGAINST THE MOB'S RULING BODY,

THE COMMISSION, TO COURT.

HE CHOOSES THIS MAN, MICHAEL CHERTOFF, AS LEAD PROSECUTOR.

CHERTOFF: It would be fair to say

there was a lot of pressure to bring this off without a hitch.

GIULIANI: Michael was a young new assistant U.S. Attorney.

I assigned him to work on the case with me.

We developed the case together for 2 and a half, 3 years.

CHERTOFF: We had to do a job that was unimpeachable.

Meaning not only that we had to collect

sufficient evidence to convict but we have to do it in a way

that wouldn't be subject to being overturned.

NARRATOR: IT'S THE MOST AMBITIOUS,

FAR-REACHING CASE AGAINST THE MOB IN AMERICAN HISTORY,

THE CULMINATION OF YEARS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT WORK.

FROM THE INFILTRATION OF THE BONANNO FAMILY BY UNDERCOVER FBI

AGENT JOE PISTONE

AND THE USE OF PAID INFORMANTS LIKE GREGORY THE GRIM REAPER

SCARPA TO A NETWORK OF WIRETAPS LACING THE MAFIA'S VERY HOMES

AND SOCIAL CLUBS.

ON FEBRUARY 25TH 1985, IT BEGINS.

KOSSLER: It had leaked out to the press that they were

gonna be

indicted, and my boss came in, and I said to Tom, I said,

you know, we got a problem.

I just got a call from the press office.

They know about the indictments. We gotta go.

NARRATOR: LAW ENFORCEMENT INDICTS AND ARRESTS 9 MEMBERS

OF THE COMMISSION, INCLUDING GAMBINO BOSS BIG

PAUL CASTELLANO, LUCHESSE BOSS TONY DUCKS CORALLO,

GENOVESE BOSS FAT TONY SALERNO.

REPORTER: As the arrests continue,

the FBI said it was the worst night ever for the mafia.

NARRATOR: FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY,

THE RULING BODY OF THE MOB, THE COMMISSION ITSELF,

WILL BE DRAGGED OUT INTO THE HARSH LIGHT OF A FEDERAL

COURTROOM.

KOSSLER: I went to the arraignment with the case agent,

and sat in the middle of the courtroom,

just he and I, and as they brought these guys in in cuffs.

And I just sat there and I just said, this is a dream!

Called Bob Blakey, I said, Bob, got news for ya. We did it.

Did what? he said.

I said We got an indictment of the commission,

of La Cosa Nostra. We did it, Bob!

BLAKEY:Now, all of the sudden in the United States Federal

courtroom,

there was an indictment that charged all these people

with all these things.

They laid out for all of the world

to see and hear what the FBI had come to know,

including the existence of the Commission.

NARRATOR: THE RICO STATUTE, WILL NOW BE PUT TO THE ULTIMATE TEST.

BUT CAN THE CASE REALLY WORK AGAINST A PREVIOUSLY UNTOUCHABLE

CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE?

GIULIANI: What the RICO statute allowed us to do is to first of

all categorize it correctly.

This is a long-term organized business.

The business of committing extortion,

committing loan sharking, committing murder.

FAT SAL: The first time I heard about the RICO act was during

the Commission trial and that's when Rudolph Giuliani learned

how to use it and started using the RICO act.

CHERTOFF: Well we knew this was gonna be a historic case,

and this offensive in its totality was designed the break

the economic power of the mob and really send them back to

what they were when they were essentially street gangs.

NEWSMAN: They call them the underworld's board of directors.

Members of a 26 family mafia commission controlling much of

America's organized crime.

REPORTER: Can you comment at all about the charges?

CHERTOFF: But they were set free on high bail.

And then the clock starts to tick.

NARRATOR: IT TICKS DOWN TO BLOODSHED.

ON DECEMBER 16TH, 1985, TEN MONTHS AFTER HIS INDICTMENT,

GAMBINO BOSS PAUL CASTELLANO, THE BOSS OF ALL BOSSES,

IS ASSASSINATED.

FAT SAL: They killed him.

They killed him right in midtown Manhattan,

him and Tommy Bilotti.

MCDONALD: He was killed over at Sparks Steakhouse.

NEWSWOMAN: A black Lincoln Continental pulled up to

the door of Sparks Steakhouse on East 46th...

DETECTIVE: The tentative identification is that it's

Paul Castellano and Tom Bilotti.

CHERTOFF: I got a call from one of the FBI agents

who was working on the Commission Case saying

Paul Castellano just got killed.

MOUW: We got the call and I sent out a couple of agents.

KOSSLER: They told me that Castellano had been executed.

COFFEY: When I get there, Castellano's body is laying

right under the awning

in front of Sparks' restaurant.

NARRATOR: AT FIRST IT'S NOT ENTIRELY CLEAR WHO PULLED OFF

THE MONSTER HIT.

REPORTER: Are there any eyewitnesses?

DETECTIVE: Well we haven't come up with anybody that is

volunteering anything at this point.

MOUW: I think 3 or 4 saw something substantive.

Because everybody else knew it's a mob hit, I didn't see nothing,

I don't want to get involved.

KOSSLER: The major part of that commission case was

the extortion of the cement business, so

when Castellano fell, when he was shot,

his head was right above this wet cement,

and I thought it was rather appropriate at the time.

He died right there in the cement.

CHERTOFF: So my reaction is, well, all the work on Castellano

is gone because he's not gonna go to trial.

NARRATOR: BUT THE OTHER BOSSES WILL.

BROUGHT TO JUSTICE AT LAST IN THE MAFIA TRIAL OF THE CENTURY.

GIULIANI: Boy we're really getting to them.

They're really under tremendous pressure when they start killing

bosses. We must have them on the run.

NARRATOR: BUT CASTELLANO'S MURDER DOESN'T STOP GIULIANI'S

PROSECUTION OF THE OTHER BOSSES.

GIULIANI: I didn't see it as a set back,

I didn't see it as a particular advantage.

I would have liked Castellano around because when you have

the boss

it helps the prosecution of the rest of the case.

But then we had so much evidence it really didn't matter.

NARRATOR: IN SEPTEMBER 1986 TEN MONTHS AFTER THE CASTELLANO HIT,

THE CASE AT LAST GOES TO TRIAL.

CHERTOFF: Well, you're in a giant courtroom,

the ceremonial courtroom in the U.S. courthouse

in downtown Manhattan,

so it's a very large courtroom, very ornate.

The gallery's packed with people watching.

These defendants are they have a kind of a business-like

attitude, but it's clearly a very tense situation.

DEVECCHIO: And there were over 75 tapes played to the jury,

there were photographs, there were videotapes played.

So it was a vast amount of evidence.

You know it was virtually it was truly overwhelming.

CHERTOFF: Now as we're moving along to trial we're continuing

to investigate and we're also collecting more physical

evidence.

We subsequently add additional figures to the case,

of which most notable is Carmine Persico,

the boss of the Colombo family.

NARRATOR: CARMINE THE SNAKE PERSICO MAKES THE RISKY DECISION

TO REPRESENT HIMSELF - A LAST DITCH ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE THE TRAP

NOW CLOSING ON ALL THE BOSSES.

DEVECCHIO: Defending yourself you have a fool for a client

is the timeworn legal adage, and Persico, I mean,

I couldn't believe he did that.

First off his vocabulary was- was, you know,

of what may be a 6th grader, and I'm giving him credit for that.

NARRATOR: GIULIANI AND CHERTOFF'S CASE AGAINST

THE COMMISSION ENCOMPASSES A WIDE ARRAY OF CRIME,

BUT THE CENTERPIECE IS MURDER THE INFAMOUS 1979 MULITIPLE

SHOOTING OF BONANNO FAMILY BOSS, CARMINE GALANTE.

NEWSMAN: Galante was having lunch in the courtyard of an

Italian restaurant in Brooklyn when 5 men entered with

automatic rifles and shotguns and opened fire.

NARRATOR: THE TRAIL OF EVIDENCE GOES BACK TO THE IMMEDIATE

AFTERMATH OF THE CRIME WHEN THE NYPD TRACKS DOWN THE GETAWAY CAR

SHORTLY AFTER GALANTE'S MURDER.

CHERTOFF: We discovered that the car had been

identified within a matter of an hour or so after the murder.

They had taken fingerprints off the car,

so we had to figure out who those fingerprints belonged to.

NARRATOR: THE FINGERPRINTS LEAD NOWHERE,

BUT INVESTIGATORS ALSO FIND PALMPRINTS,

AND THOSE HAVE A MATCH, KNOWN BONANNO CAPTAIN,

ANTHONY INDELICATO.

CHERTOFF: And it turned out that the palm prints matched.

There was a little bit of evidence that Joe Pistone,

the undercover agent,

had, that members of the Bonanno family had killed Galante,

and part of that was also proven by the existence of

a videotape that had been taken in 1979.

Shortly after the murder, showing people who were believed

to be the murderers going to meet with the underboss

of the Gambino family and getting congratulated.

NARRATOR: THE PALM PRINT AND SURVEILLANCE ARE DAMNING,

BUT GIULIANI AND CHERTOFF ALSO HAVE A SECRET WEAPON

TO TIE GALANTE'S MURDER TO THE COMMISSION

UNDERCOVER AGENT JOE PISTONE AKA DONNIE BRASCO,

AND HE HELPS SUPPLY THE MOTIVE.

PISTONE: Galante controlled

all the importation of drugs into the US for the mafia.

And Galante wouldn't share with any of the other families.

So the other families got together

and they decided he's go to go.

CHERTOFF: The reason this murder was important in the case was

because it was one of those relatively rare instances where

you can actually tie a murder to the commission itself.

NARRATOR: WITH SUCH A WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE,

THE FATE OF THE MAFIA'S BOARD, THE COMMISSION,

IS ALL BUT SEALED.

REPORTER: The government called Anthony Tony Ducks Corallo,

Carmine Junior Persico, and Anthony Fat Tony Salerno,

the board of directors of the mafia.

And today, after 6 days of deliberation,

a New York jury agreed, finding them and 5 of their associates

all guilty of running a racketeering and extortion

enterprise.

GIULIANI: We have now proven in a court of law,

beyond a reasonable doubt, not only that there's a mafia but

that there's a commission, that it runs the mafia...

NARRATOR: THE COMMISSION CASE IS THE CENTERPIECE OF AN ALL OUT

LEGAL ASSAULT ON THE MAFIA, AN ASSAULT THAT INCLUDES CASES

AGAINST INDIVIDUAL FAMILIES, BUT PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANT,

AGAINST LABOR UNIONS.

GIULIANI: And there we were able to expose it,

bring it before a federal judge, have the federal judge throw

everybody out of the teamsters,

throw everybody out of the central state's pension fund,

let us bring in a monitor and let us change the whole thing.

For some reason, that's when I felt the sense

that we've done our job now.

I mean- now we have them in a situation where they can never

quite reinvent themselves.

NARRATOR: AFTER DECADES IN THE DARK,

LAW ENFORCEMENT HAS FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO FIGHT

COSA NOSTRA.

THE RICO LAW ENDS AN ERA IN THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MOB,

NOW FULLY VISIBLE FOR THE FIRST TIME.

GIULIANI: First of all, ended the debate about the mafia.

We proved in court, beyond a reasonable doubt that there

is a mafia.

It took down all these people that supposedly were

impregnable, the bosses.

It created chaos in the organization.

And chaos in an organization is a gold mine for law enforcement.

FRANZESE: I know people don't like to give Giuliani credit for

this, but he was the guy that used the statute effectively,

no doubt about it.

So yeah, I mean it was eye opening.

Here's all the bosses, they're getting convicted, they're gone.

They're going away.

I mean, this was a rumble throughout all the families.

What happens now?

Reporter: The sentences were handed down at the Federal Court

in New York.

The end of the trial seen here is historic.

KOSSLER: And it brought them to a point where we exposed them

for what they were.

Reporter: The single most important campaign against

America's organized crime syndicates for decades.

NARRATOR: WHEN THE TRIAL ENDS, OF THE ORIGINAL 9 MEMBERS

INDICTED IN THE COMMSSION CASE TWO ARE DEAD.

IN THE GAMBINO FAMILY, PAUL CASTELLANO FROM A HAIL

OF BULLETS AND ANIELLO DELLACROCE FROM CANCER.

ANOTHER, PHILIP RUSTY RASTELLI OF THE BONANNO FAMILY RECEIVES

A SEPARATE TRIAL.

THE OTHER SIX RECEIVE LIFE IN PRISON.

FAT TONY SALERNO OF THE GENOVESE FAMILY DIES IN A FEDERAL

FACILITY IN 1992,

AND TONY DUCKS CORALLO FOLLOWS HIM IN 2000.

COLOMBO BOSS CARMINE SNAKE PERSICO IS SENTENCED TO SERVE

HIS 100 YEARS IN A NORTH CAROLINA PRISON

WHERE HE STILL SITS TODAY.

WISE GUYS KEEP WORKING THE ANGLES,

BLOOD STILL SPILLS IN THE STREETS

BUT COSA NOSTRA IS NOW A HEADLESS SNAKE.

MOUW: The mobsters call this the Holocaust-The hit of the century

NARRATOR: ONE AMBITIOUS GANGSTER IS POISED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE

OF THE CHAOS,

THE MOST FAMOUS MOBSTER OF MODERN TIMES,

POLISI: He could kill somebody in 30 seconds.

NARRATOR: JOHN GOTTI.

POLISI: Unbelievable the power that he had.

CUTLER: He was always on. He was bullet on.