Deal with the Devil

by Peter Lance

  43. Ranalli, Deadly Alliance, 58.

  44. The primary agent, an alternate, and their supervisor. U.S. v. Victor M. Orena et al., testimony of Special Agent Howard Leadbetter II, May 18, 1995, 1313.

  45. Ronald J. Ostrow and Robert L. Jackson, “Agents Could Face Charges in Presser Inquiry,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1985.

  46. Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

  47. Jane Ann Morrison, “‘Lefty’ Rosenthal Was an FBI Snitch,” Las Vegas Review Journal, October 30, 2008.

  48. Plain Dealer staff, “Car Bomb Kills Danny Greene,” Plain Dealer, October 7, 1977.

  49. Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob (New York: HarperPaperbacks, 2001).

  50. “FBI Helped Bulger Evade Detection, Ex-Cop Says,” CBS News, June 24, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/24/earlyshow/main20073987.shtml.

  51. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, November 21, 1961.

  CHAPTER 2: A TRUE MACHIAVELLI

  1. Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 106.

  2. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 533.

  3. John A. Goldsmith, “Valachi Says Gang Menaces Society,” United Press International, October 3, 1963.

  4. Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 135–38.

  5. National Geographic Channel, Inside the Mafia: What Mafia?, May 26, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhXRa0g_has&feature=related.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Thomas L. Jones, “The Dying of the Light: The Joseph Valachi Story,” TruTV.com, http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/mob_bosses/valachi//index_1.html.

  8. Raab, Five Families, 137.

  9. Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), 123–28.

  10. Ibid., 43.

  11. Raab, Five Families, 137.

  12. Memo by liaison, December 4, 1967. Subject: Gregory Scarpa, FBI #584217A.

  13. On April 3, 1961. See Appendix C, a list of Scarpa Sr.’s twenty arrests.

  14. Memo, June 27, 1966 memorandum from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, July 6, 1967.

  15. One of the most famous scenes in The Godfather (novel and film) was inspired by an incident during the war in which Profaci gunmen killed Gallo loyalist Joseph “Joe Jelly” Gioiello and tossed his clothing, filled with fish, in front of a restaurant frequented by the Gallo brothers. The message, immortalized by Mario Puzo, was that he “sleeps with the fishes.” Raab, Five Families, 194.

  16. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, March 28, 1963.

  17. Letter from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. June 27, 1966. This letter was written during a period when Scarpa’s initial contacting agents had been transferred and he was withdrawing his cooperation.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, July 6, 1967.

  20. Letter from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, June 27, 1966.

  21. Memo by liaison, December 4, 1967.

  22. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, November 21, 1961.

  23. Addendum: Criminal Investigative Division, April 8, 1987, memorializing an April 3, 1987, teletype requesting payment for “captioned source” for supplying “extremely singular information which led to 17 Title III intercepts and 50 reauthorizations forming the basis for the prosecution of the Colombo family.” U.S. v. Carmine Persico, No. 84 Cr.809 (JFK), opinion of Judge John F. Keenan denying motions to dismiss, http://www.ipsn.org/court_cases/us_v_persico_1986-09-25.htm.

  24. Lou Diamond, in an interview with Fredric Dannen, “The G-Man and the Hit Man,” New Yorker, December 16, 1996.

  25. Memo, FBI New York Office, October 3, 1966.

  26. Letter from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, June 27, 1966.

  27. Memo from J. H. Gale, assistant director, FBI, to Cartha DeLoach, deputy director, FBI, August 4, 1967.

  28. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, June 18, 1962, 11 pages.

  29. R. Lindley DeVecchio and Charles Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Fighter (New York: Berkley, 2011), 108: “Although never a capo, Scarpa had his own very special status. He later confided in me that he would never agree to be a capo because it would draw too much attention to himself. He remained a soldier under capo Anthony ‘Scappi’ Scarpati, although their relationship was a mere formality. Scarpa always did his own thing.”

  30. The title of Fredric Dannen’s seminal piece on the Scarpa-DeVecchio scandal in the New Yorker, December 16, 1996.

  31. U.S. v. Michael Sessa, testimony of R. Lindley DeVecchio, November 2, 1992.

  CHAPTER 3: HITTING THE BOSS

  1. Memo from director, FBI, to New York authorizing payment of $3,000 to informant, June 26, 1962.

  2. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, June 6, 1963.

  3. Emmanuel Perlmutter, “Valachi Accuses Mafia Leader at Senate Inquiry,” New York Times, September 28, 1963.

  4. Author’s interview with DEA Special Agent Michael Levine (ret.), October 8, 2011.

  5. Michael T. Kaufman, “Profacis’ Roots Deep in Brooklyn,” New York Times, August 18, 1964.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Joseph A. Gambardello, “Colombo Family Has Bloody Past,” Newsday, December 17, 1991.

  8. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, June 25, 1962.

  9. Selwyn Raab, “Even to the 5 Families, the Fighting Colombos Have Been Black Sheep,” New York Times, December 10, 1991.

  10. Kaufman, “Profacis’ Roots Deep in Brooklyn.”

  11. Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 322–23.

  12. Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder, Murder, Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate Killing Machine (New York: Tenacity Media Books, 2012), 20. See link to the Foreword of a new edition of the book published in 2012: http://peterlance.com/wordpress/?p=450.

  13. Meyer Berger, “Anastasia Slain in a Hotel Here; Led Murder, Inc.”New York Times, October 26, 1957.

  14. Raab, Five Families, 328.

  15. Tom Folsom, The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld (New York: Weinstein Books, 2008), 35.

  16. David J. Krajicek, “Frankie Abbatemarco Is the Opening Casualty in the Profaci Family Civil War,” New York Daily News, September 19, 2010.

  17. Nicholas Gage, “Key Mafia Figure Tells of ‘Wars’ and Gallo-Colombo Peace Talks,” New York Times, July 7, 1975.

  18. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, March 20, 1962, 7.

  19. Nicholas Gage, “Grudge Against Gallo Date to ‘War’ with Profaci,” New York Times, April 8, 1972.

  20. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, March 20, 1962, 6–8.

  21. Gage, “Grudge Against Gallo.”
>
  22. Ibid.

  23. FBI letterhead memo (LHM) re: Gregory Scarpa, May 1, 1962, 2.

  24. Author’s interview with Alan Futerfas, May 24, 2004.

  25. Gambardello, “Colombo Family Has Bloody Past.”

  CHAPTER 4: THE SPECIAL GOES SOUTH

  1. Author’s interview with Fredric Dannen, October 2, 2011.

  2. U.S. v. Cecil Ray Price et al., Criminal Action Number 5291, U.S. Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, October 7, 1968.

  3. Jerry Mitchell, “Experts: Autopsy Reveals Beating,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, June 4, 2000.

  4. Peter Lance, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War on Terror (New York: ReganBooks, 2004), 14.

  5. Andrew Jacobs, “The Southern Town Struggles with a Violent Legacy,” New York Times, May 29, 2004.

  6. Author’s interviews with Judge W. O. Chet Dillard, October 10, 2011, and June 11, 2004.

  7. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, October 29, 2007, transcript, 1544–52.

  8. Tom Robbins and Jerry Capeci, “FBI Used Wiseguy to Crack KKK Man,” New York Daily News, June 21, 1994.

  9. Dillard interview, October 10, 2011.

  10. Dillard interview, June 11, 2004.

  11. Fredric Dannen, interview with confidential source, October 1996.

  12. Mitchell, “Experts: Autopsy Reveals Beating.”

  13. Author’s interview with Linda Schiro, November 3, 2007.

  14. Jennifer S. Lee, “Samuel Bowers, 82, Klan Leader Convicted in Fatal Bombing, Dies,” New York Times, November 6, 2006.

  15. Fredric Dannen, “The G-Man and the Hit Man,” New Yorker, December 16, 1996; Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 411.

  16. Dillard interview, October 10, 2011.

  17. Memo to assistant director from , January 21, 1966. Although no airtel in the recently disclosed material documents Scarpa’s 1964 assignment, that memo, memorializing Scarpa’s recruiting for the Vernon Dahmer case, uses the term “special.”

  18. Ibid.

  19. W. O. Chet Dillard, Clear Burning: Civil Rights, Civil Wrongs (Jackson, MS: Persimmon Press, 1992). In an interview with the author on October 9, 2011, Judge Dillard said that in recent years he had identified an eyewitness to the kidnapping—a man whose father had run a welding shop adjacent to the alley behind Byrd’s store. Though only a boy at the time of the abduction, the witness confirmed the details for Dillard.

  20. Dillard interview, October 10, 2011.

  21. Dillard interview, July 11, 2004.

  22. Dannen, “The G-Man and the Hit Man.”

  23. FBI 302 memo, interrogation of Lawrence Byrd, February 2, 1966.

  24. Signed confession of Lawrence Byrd, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, March 2, 1996. Ruth A. Olenski, reporter.

  25. Ibid., testimony of Linda Schiro, 2007, transcript, 1552.

  26. Lee, “Samuel Bowers, 82.”

  27. Robert D. McFadden, “First Murder Charge in ’64 Civil Rights Killings of 3,” New York Times, January 7, 2005.

  28. Shaila Dewan, “Former Klansman Guilty of Manslaughter in 1964 Deaths,”New York Times, June 22, 2005.

  29. Ariel Hart, “41 Years Later, Ex-Klansman Gets 60 Years in Civil Rights Deaths,” New York Times, June 24, 2005.

  30. “Sarah Wallace Killer Says Civil Rights Violated,” WABC-TV, February 4, 2009.

  31. A series of hearings into intelligence abuses by the CIA and FBI was conducted by Senator Frank Church (D-ID) and Congressman Otis D. Pike (D-NY), who chaired separate Select Committees on Intelligence. The multiple reports of the Church Committee, which held hearings from 1975 to 1976, can be accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee. The House of Representatives voted not to release Pike’s report without presidential approval, but it was published by the Village Voice after NPR reporter Daniel Schorr leaked a copy to the weekly. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/07/the_village_voi_3.php.

  32. Author’s interview with DEA Special Agent Michael Levine (ret.), October 8, 2011.

  33. Anthony Villano with Gerald Astor, Brick Agent: Inside the Mafia for the FBI (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), 93.

  34. Sandra Harmon,Mafia Son: The Scarpa Mob Family, the FBI, and a Story of Betrayal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009), 60–64. A self-professed “Love Coach, Life Coach, Love Trainer” (http://www.sandraharmon.com), Harmon is the coauthor of the Priscilla Presley tell-all Elvis & Me (New York: Putnam, 1985).

  35. Richard Esposito, “Former Fave FBI Stool Pigeon Indicted,” ABC News, March 30, 2006, http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1786440&page=2.

  36. Jerry Capeci, “Ex-FBI Agent Probed in Mob Hits,” New York Sun, January 12, 2006.

  37. Tom Robbins, “Mobster on a Mission,” Village Voice, January 10, 2006.

  38. Testimony of Marty Light before the President’s Commission on Organized Crime, Washington, DC, January 29, 1986.

  39. U.S. v. Victor Orena, November 19, 1992, 976.

  CHAPTER 5: SINATRA, CAPOTE, AND THE ANIMAL

  1. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, June 6, 1963.

  2. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, September 21, 1964.

  3. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, November 3, 1965.

  4. Amount is closer to $120,794.97 according to the website U.S. Inflation Calculator, http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/.

  5. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, August 16, 1966.

  6. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, July 29, 1967.

  7. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, August 16, 1966.

  8. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, July 29, 1967.

  9. Author’s interview with FBI Special Agent Dan Vogel (ret.), October 14, 2011.

  10. Memo from J. H. Gale, assistant director, to Cartha DeLoach, deputy director, August 4, 1967.

  11. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, July 29, 1967.

  12. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Linda Schiro, October 29, 2007, transcript, 1554.

  13. Anthony Villano with Gerald Astor, Brick Agent: Inside the Mafia for the FBI (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), 9.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, August 25, 1967.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Author’s interview with DEA Special Agent Michael Levine (ret.), October 8, 2011.

  18. Villano, Brick Agent, 93–94.

  19. Villano died in 1978, but in researching his 1996 piece for the New Yorker, Fredric Dannen interviewed his coauthor, Gerald Astor. He confirmed that the two Mafiosi were based on Scarpa. “We did that to give him more cover,” Astor told Dannen. Fredric Dannen, interviews with Gerald Astor, September 30 and October 1, 1996.

  20. Villano, Brick Agent, 90–94. Villano doesn’t mention the Dahmer case by name. In fact, he implies that Scarpa’s work was in connection with FBI efforts to solve the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers—a possible third Mississippi mission for the TE informant. But the facts as related in Brick Agent suggest that the expenses were owed in relation to the Lawrence Byrd interrogation.

  21. Memo from Gale to DeLoach, August 4, 1967.

  22. Amount is closer to $3,969.33 according to U.S. Inflation Calculator, http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/.

  23. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, January 23, 1968.

  24. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, January 18, 1968.

  25. Levine interview, October 8, 2011.

  26. Vogel interview, October 14, 2011.

  27. Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder, Murder, Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate Killing Machine (New York: Tenacity Media Books, 2012), 359–60.

>   28. House Committee on Government Reform, Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants, 3rd Report, HR Rep. No. 108-414 at 454 (2004), 62.

  29. FBI teletype from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, February 15, 1968.

  30. FBI teletype from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI Boston Office, February 16, 1968.

  31. Deborah Davis, The Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball (New York: Wiley, 2006).

  32. Charlotte Curtis, “Capote’s Black and White Ball: ‘The Most Exquisite of Spectator Sports,’” New York Times, November 29, 1966.

  33. Ibid.

  34. The initial name was “American-Italian Anti-Defamation Council.” Colombo later changed it to the “Italian-American Civil Rights League.” Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), 12; memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, April 11, 1966.

  35. Fred Ferretti, “Italian-American League’s Power Spreads,” New York Times, April 4, 1971.

  36. Craig Whitney, “Italians Picket F.B.I. Office Here,”New York Times, May 2, 1970.

  37. Fred Ferretti, “TV’s ‘F.B.I.’ to Drop ‘Mafia’ and ‘Cosa Nostra’ from Its Scripts,” New York Times, March 24, 1971.

  38. Nicholas Gage, “A Few Family Murders, but That’s Show Biz,” New York Times, March 19, 1972.

  39. Nicholas Pileggi, “The Making of ‘The Godfather’—Sort of a Home Movie,” New York Times, August 15, 1971.

  40. Morris Kaplan, “Kahane and Colombo Join Forces to Fight U.S. Harassment,” New York Times, May 14, 1971.

  41. Pileggi, “The Making of ‘The Godfather.’”

  42. William E. Farrell, “Colombo Shot, Gunman Slain at Columbus Circle Rally Site,” New York Times, June 29, 1971.

  43. Fred Ferretti, “Suspect in Shooting of Colombo Linked to Gambino Family,” New York Times, July 20, 1971.