Deal with the Devil

by Peter Lance

  44. Arnold H. Lubasch, “11 Indicted by U.S. as the Leadership of a Crime Family,” New York Times, October 25, 1984.

  CHAPTER 6: AGENT PROVOCATEUR

  1. One definition given by Webster’s is similar: “a person employed to encourage people to break the law so that they can be arrested,” http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/agent%20provocateur.

  2. FBI teletype on reopening of Gregory Scarpa, FBI NY #534217A, July 1, 1980.

  3. Conclusion of Judge Gustin Reichbach, decision and order of dismissal, People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, November, 1, 2007, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/reichbach.pdf. See Appendix H.

  4. FBI teletype from director, FBI, to FBI New York Office, September 25, 1991.

  5. Anthony Villano with Gerald Astor, Brick Agent: Inside the Mafia for the FBI (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), 105.

  6. That figure was determined by breaking down the $158,400 in total payments made to Scarpa Sr. from September 1962 to September 25, 1991, the date of a teletype to the director from the New York SAC. Based on the 149 months of “34’s” first term as a TECI, from September 1962 through May 1975, and the 134 months of his second term, from July 1980 through September 1991, and adjusting the average of fees paid annually to 2013 dollars via www.usinflationcalculator.com, the totals were $526,355.32 for the first term (1962–1975) and $155,114.49 for the second term (1980–1991).

  Further, in his memoir, Scarpa Sr.’s third contacting agent, Anthony Villano, estimated that “34” had earned $52,000 in insurance rewards brokered by Villano for various hijackings that Scarpa Sr. told the FBI about during an unspecified eighteen-month period. Reckoning that period as commencing in January 1968, the date of the Olympic Airways heist, after which Scarpa Sr. informed Villano of the most hijackings, that $52,000 figure adjusted to 2013 dollars represented $337,035.25. Adding it to the adjusted totals for Scarpa Sr.’s two terms as a Top Echelon Criminal Informant, the combined figure in payments from the FBI and insurance rewards represented $1,007,668.50 in 2013 dollars.

  7. Description of the Colombo family drawn from Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 326.

  8. Memo from J. H. Gale, assistant director, to Cartha DeLoach, deputy director, July 9, 1970.

  9. 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 3, 1970, 4.

  10. 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 24, 1967, 7.

  11. 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 5, 1969, 1; 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 9, 1970, 4–6.

  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, July 2, 1970.

  13. FBI memo, November 9, 1970.

  14. 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 16, 1971.

  15. 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 29, 1971.

  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, September 2, 1971.

  17. Raab, Five Families, 324.

  18. Fredric Dannen, interview with Louis Diamond, October 16, 1966.

  19. Raab, Five Families, 194.

  20. Author’s interview with Mario Puzo, April 12, 1999.

  21. Larry McShane, “Matty the Horse’s Ride Could End in Prison,” Associated Press, March 4, 2007.

  22. Eric Pace, “Joe Gallo Is Shot to Death in Little Italy Restaurant,” New York Times, April 8, 1972.

  23. Nicholas Gage, “Two Are Hunted in Gallo Murder,” New York Times, April 14, 1972.

  24. Nicholas Gage, “Story of Joe Gallo’s Murder: 5 in Colombo Gang Implicated,” New York Times, May 3, 1972.

  25. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, July 25, 1972.

  26. Indictment, U.S. v. Gregory Scarpa, Gennaro Ciprio et al., 72 CR997. 72 CR866, July 18, 1972. Fourteen-page indictment.

  27. Nicholas Gage. “Slain Brooklyn Man Described as Colombo Family Associate,” New York Times, April 11, 1972.

  28. Order to Transfer, July 18, 1972. Ciprio, a senior Colombo family associate, was standing a few feet away from the boss, Joseph Colombo, when he was shot. Five months after the indictment was handed down, Ciprio was murdered. The shooting occurred just four days after the rubout of Colombo’s archrival, Crazy Joe Gallo, in Little Italy. It’s unclear what impact Ciprio’s death may have had on the stolen-securities case.

  29. U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, order of dismissal, April 6, 1973.

  30. Gage, “Slain Brooklyn Man.”

  31. Special Agents David M. Parker and Robert J. O’Brien, FBI 302 memo re: Carmine Sessa, April 18, 1994, 2.

  32. Author’s interview with Flora Edwards, November 3, 2011.

  CHAPTER 7: GOD, THE MOB, AND THE FBI

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

  2. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, July 25, 1972.

  3. “Smiling New Yorker Refuses Answers on Mail Theft Ring,” Associated Press, July 21, 1971.

  4. Testimony of Gregory Scarpa before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Government Operations Committee, OC and Stolen Securities, 1971, 633–35; 616; David Scheim, Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1971), 345.

  5. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, September 2, 1971, referencing a Scarpa debriefing on June 29, 1971, 2.

  6. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, August 21, 1968.

  7. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, November 24, 1967, 3.

  8. Ibid., 4.

  9. Ibid., 8.

  10. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, December 20, 1968, 2–3.

  11. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 5, 1969, 2–3.

  12. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 5, 1970, 3.

  13. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, November 9, 1970, 1–2.

  14. Author’s interview with Ellen Resnick, February 21, 2012.

  15. Anthony Villano with Gerald Astor, Brick Agent: Inside the Mafia for the FBI (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), 105–106.

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

  17. Affidavit of Gregory Scarpa Jr. sworn before a notary at the ADX Florence prison, July 30, 2002.

  18. U.S. v. Victor Orena, decision of Judge Jack B. Weinstein, habeas hearing, January 16, 2004.

  19. The first terrorist was Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Bojinka plot to blow up U.S. airliners over the Pacific. As chronicled in Chapter 38, Greg Scarpa Jr. obtained reams of intelligence from Yo
usef in an FBI-directed sting between 1996 and 1997, when they were in adjacent cells in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail in Lower Manhattan. A series of FBI 302 memos documenting that investigation can be downloaded from http://www.peterlance.com/PLfbi.htm. The second terrorist was Terry Nichols, convicted with Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombing. As detailed in Chapter 39, that story was documented by Associated Press reporters Jim Solomon and Mark Sherman in 2005: John Solomon, “Explosives Found in Former Home of Terry Nichols,” Associated Press, April 2, 2005; Mark Sherman, “FBI Waited to Check Out Tip on Nichols,” Associated Press, April 14, 2005.

  20. Keith Wheeler and Sandy Smith, “Murph the Surf and His Jewel Studded Jinx,” Life, April 21, 1967.

  21. “Murph the Surf Held in a Miami Burglary,”New York Times, January 3, 1965.

  22. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, March 13, 1968, 2–3.

  23. Starting in 1980, Yablonsky ran the FBI’s Las Vegas Office. Michael Newton, Mr. Mob: The Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), 262–63.

  24. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 3, 1968, 2.

  25. U.S. v. Gregory Scarpa et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois Indictment, Case No. 72 CR866, July 18, 1972. The indictment charged Scarpa, Gerry Ciprio, and nine others in the theft of a series of municipal bonds, including five bonds with a face value of $5,000 from Cleveland, Ohio, and another five $5,000 bonds from Columbus, totaling $50,000. The case dovetails with the May 1970 airtel in which Greg Scarpa Sr., according to Anthony Villano, helped the Feds recover a cache of bonds worth an estimated $550,000—among them municipal bonds from Cleveland and Columbus in the same $5,000 denominations as those listed in the Chicago indictment. Memo from New York SAC to the director, FBI, May 5, 1970.

  26. Archives of the Brooklyn Public Library, “Regina Pacis and the Case of the Missing Crowns,” Brooklynology.org, August 5, 2009. The $100,000 cost would equal $868,758.49 in 2013 dollars according to http://www.usinflationcalculator.com.

  27. “Religion: Thieves in the Shrine,” Time, June 9, 1952.

  28. Brooklyn Public Library, “Regina Pacis.”

  29. “Religion: Thieves in the Shrine.”

  30. “Hush-Hush Relationship between Mob and Church,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 10, 1999.

  31. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, August 31, 1962, 10.

  32. Villano, Brick Agent, 111–14.

  33. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to acting director, FBI, April 5, 1973, 1–3.

  34. “Jewelry Recovered by FBI for Church,” Associated Press, in Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, January 22, 1973.

  35. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, April 5, 1973.

  36. Author’s interview with James Whalen, May 19, 2011.

  CHAPTER 8: THIRTY DAYS IN FORTY-TWO YEARS

  1. Selwyn Raab, “The Mobster Was a Mole for the FBI: Tangled Life of a Mafia Figure Who Died of AIDS Is Exposed,” New York Times, November 20, 1994.

  2. Letter from Edward A. McDonald, attorney in charge, U.S. Department of Justice, Organized Crime Strike Force, EDNY, to Hon. I. Leo Glasser, July 22, 1986.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Letter from Edward A. McDonald, attorney in charge, U.S. Department of Justice, Organized Crime Strike Force, EDNY, to Louis E. Diamond, Gregory Scarpa Sr.’s attorney, setting forth terms of plea agreement, July 18, 1986.

  8. U.S. District Court judgment and probation/commitment order, February 6, 1987; satisfaction of judgment, filed February 5, 1992; Greg Smith and Jerry Capeci, “Mob, Mole & Murder,” New York Daily News, October 31, 1994.

  9. Raab, “The Mobster Was a Mole.”

  10. U.S. v. Michael Sessa, testimony of Supervisory Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, transcript, 119.

  11. R. Lindley DeVecchio and Charles Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Buster (New York: Berkley, 2011), 116.

  12. Nicholas Gage, “Slain Brooklyn Man Described as Columbo ‘Family’ Associate,” New York Times, April 11, 1972.

  13. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 5, 1970, 3.

  14. Order to transfer, July 18, 1972; Nicholas Gage, “Slain Brooklyn Man.”

  15. U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, order of dismissal, April 6, 1973.

  16. Memo (airtel) from special agent in charge, FBI Newark Office, to assistant director, FBI, April 10, 1973.

  17. Memo (airtel) from special agent in charge, FBI Newark Office, to assistant director, FBI, April 30, 1973.

  18. Author’s interview with James Whalen, May 19, 2011.

  19. Memo (airtel) from special agent in charge, FBI Newark Office, to director, FBI, October 9, 1973.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Teletype from FBI Newark Office to director, FBI, June 6, 1974.

  22. Cover of special-delivery package addressed to director, FBI, time-stamped March 13, 1976.

  23. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI Newark Office, to Brooklyn Strike Force, December 6, 1976.

  24. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI Newark Office, to director, FBI, March 30, 1977.

  25. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI Newark Office, to director, FBI, September 9, 1977, 2.

  26. Memo from FBI Newark Office to Bureau (1) Headquarters, December 19, 1977.

  27. Letter from McDonald to Glasser.

  28. Author’s interview with Flora Edwards, October 13, 2011.

  29. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, January 20, 1966.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Author’s interview with confidential FBI source, October 14, 2011.

  33. “6 Charged with Hijacking 870 Cases of Scotch Here,”New York Times, October 10, 1969.

  34. People of the State of New York v. Gregory Scarpa Sr. et al., indictment, October 8, 1969.

  35. Letter from McDonald to Glasser.

  36. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI Newark Office, to director, February 24, 1969.

  37. Author’s interview with former special agent in FBI New York Office, November 22, 2011.

  38. Michael T. Kaufman, “Profaci’s Roots Deep in Brooklyn,” New York Times, August 18, 1964.

  39. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, March 20, 1962, 9.

  40. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, June 18, 1962, 2.

  41. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, April 3, 1962, 2.

  42. Kaufman, “Profaci’s Roots.”

  43. Christopher Hoffman, “Whitey,” New Haven Independent, August 31, 2009, http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/08/whitey.php.

  44. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 1, 1964, 2.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Kaufman, “Profaci’s Roots.”

  47. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, July 9, 1962.

  48. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, January 20, 1964.

  49. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, November 7, 1963, 3.

  50. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, November 6, 1964.

  51. Michael T. Kaufman, “Mafia Elder Slain in Brooklyn Sipping Drink at Soda Fountain,” New York Times, April 20, 1968.

  52. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, August 12, 1965, 2.

  53. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, September 2, 1965.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FB
I, September 13, 1966.

  56. In some source material Richard LoCicero is referred to as the Sidge’s “nephew” or “grand-nephew.” See testimony of Michael Gallinaro, an investigator for the McClellan subcommittee, at the 1971 hearing cited later in this book: Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Government Operations Committee, OC and Stolen Securities, June 8–10 and 16, 1971, 633–35; 616. However, in a later airtel, boss Joseph Colombo himself identified Richard as LoCicero’s “grandson.” Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 3, 1968, 5–6.

  57. Emmanuel Perlmutter, “‘Star Witness’ in Big Robbery Slain in Brooklyn,” New York Times, April 6, 1967.

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

  59. Ibid.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Perlmutter, “‘Star Witness’ in Big Robbery.”

  62. Gallinaro testimony, 1971.

  63. Perlmutter, “‘Star Witness’ in Big Robbery.”

  64. Ibid.

  65. Ibid.

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

  67. Kaufman, “Mafia Elder Slain.”

  68. Ibid.

  69. Nancy Katz, Greg B. Smith, and William Sherman, “Probing Mob Links to G-Man,” New York Daily News, January 5, 2006.

  70. Kaufman, “Mafia Elder Slain.”

  71. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, April 1, 1964, 2.

  72. Kaufman, “Mafia Elder Slain.”

  CHAPTER 9: THE OCTOPUS

  1. Claire Sterling, Octopus: How the Long Reach of the Sicilian Mafia Controls the Global Narcotics Trade (New York: Touchstone, 1990), 13, quoting Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  2. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, January 20, 1966, 2.

  3. Paid Notice in the New York Times: Deaths: Obituary of Elliott Golden, July 29, 2008.

  4. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, August 25, 1967, 4.

  5. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 3, 1968, 5–6.