02x01 - The Mob: The Heroin Don

[bunniefuu]

♫ ♫

PRODUCER: My brother. Wassup?

DOPE BOY PAPI: Wassup, wassup?

Dope Boy Papi,

El Jefe, the big boss.

Dominican Republic is mine.

Anything that comes

and leaves outta here,

it needs to come through me.

DOPE BOY PAPI: I distribute

to New York and to Miami.

I use mules, and I use boats.

PRODUCER: Do you ever feel

guilty about selling drugs?

DOPE BOY PAPI: You never

feel guilty about making money.

PRODUCER: Do you think

drugs should be legalized?

DOPE BOY PAPI: It

will never be legalized.

That's how we make money.

PRODUCER: So, you prefer

it to be ill*gal, or?

DOPE BOY PAPI: ill*gal.

MAN: Shake this square world

and blast off for Kicksville.

NIXON: (over PA) America's public

enemy number one is drug abuse.

NANCY: Just say no.

GEORGE: The mafia

is a major player in the

international drug underworld.

ANTHONY: But at

the end of the day,

it's all about the dollar.

It's all about the dollar.

REAGAN: (over PA) The American

people want the mob and its

associates brought to justice

and their power broken.

HARRIS: (over PA) There's

now an understanding that the

w*r on drugs was

an abject failure.

MAN: You have to stop

and ask yourself,

"How did we get here?"

Brought to you by Sailor420

!!! Hope you enjoy the film !!!

♫ ♫

ANGELA: We were so excited

every time daddy came home,

because daddy wasn't

really home a lot.

I was under the impression that

he worked for the CIA or the FBI,

and he was on these missions.

He wasn't tall, he was stocky.

But it wasn't fat,

he was all muscle,

and he had a punch that

you wouldn't believe.

He put up one of those

punching bags in the basement,

and I used to watch him,

and it would

just blow my mind.

How does the bag even get

back to him, he's so fast?

He was very strong.

Very strong.

When he hit you, he hit you.

My name is Angela Tucceri,

and I am the daughter

of Carmine Galante,

also known as "The Cigar".

(laughs)

BILL: Carmine Galante was,

far and away, the biggest

heroin kingpin in the world.

He developed a whole

system of smuggling tons of

heroin into the country.

CARMINE: Heroin trafficking

turned out to be the most

profitable venture that

the mafia went into.

ANGELA: He saw drugs as

his opportunity to almost

take over the world.

♫ ♫

RALPH: The apprentice

to the Bonanno family,

which is one of the five main

crime families in New York.

He was particularly

close to Joseph Bonanno,

who was the boss.

RALPH: Carmine Galante was

a street thug for the mob,

and he was ruthless,

which helped him rise in

the mafia organization.

He was just the kind of

guy they were looking for.

ANGELA: I do have to say this,

what he did might be wrong,

but he excelled in it.

RALPH: In the 50s,

Joe Bonanno sent him

to Montreal to organize

the rackets there.

It's not really

that well known,

but Canada became a big

nurturing place for the mafia,

and for organized crime

and drug trafficking.

Border controls were relaxed,

and it was easy to

bring in shipments of

drugs from Europe,

particularly the French

speaking parts, like Montreal.

MAN: Montreal is the

largest city in Canada.

Its great seaport and

industry gives the city a

transcontinental economy.

RALPH: The fact that Bonanno

dispatched him to Canada

showed the trust

that they had in him.

CARMINE: Galante was termed the

"Foreign Minister" of Bonanno.

He headed Bonanno's operation

of drug trafficking, gambling,

loan sharking, etc.

and from there,

he made a lot of

money for Bonanno.

ANGELA: Montreal, to me,

was a very glamorous city

at the time.

It never felt anything

but a vacation to me.

He had in his passport

"occupation", and it said,

"restaurant owner".

So, even when I was younger,

I knew that daddy owned

a restaurant in Canada.

It never dawned on me that,

"Oh, this is a great

place for dad to start

bringing in his drugs."

It just, you know,

I didn't know any of that.

RALPH: The French Connection

really grew out of World w*r II,

because the French

would arrange shipments

through Turkey,

where opium was prevalent,

to processing

plants in Marseille.

From there, French

organized crime brought it

into the US, through Canada.

MAN: Whose stuff is it?

Is it any good?

WOMAN: It's very good.

REPORTER: The commodity

of this marketplace is

the narcotic drug, heroin,

packaged in small white bags.

There are $3 bags and $5 bags.

REPORTER 2: What is happening

on this street corner is part

of an international

multimillion dollar

a year business.

CARMINE: The United States

was a pure market for heroin,

and the Mafia saw that this

was the fast way of making

a lot of money.

WOMAN: Take it now.

Take it down, that's all.

♫ ♫

CARMINE: Present at this

meeting were members of the

American Mafia, including

Joe Bonnano, Carmine Galante.

On the Sicilian side,

among others,

there was Lucky Luciano,

Tommaso Buscetta.

They put a plan together

to make a lot of money.

The way to make a lot of

money was through drugs.

RALPH: That meeting

established the contours of

the drug trafficking

between Italy and the US,

how it would be divided up,

and laid out the

groundwork of cooperation

between the Sicilian Mafia

and the American Mafia.

RALPH: The Sicilians had no

criminal records in America,

and they were an

unknown quantity to

American law enforcement.

CARMINE: As the underboss

of the Bonanno family,

Galante took it upon

himself to mention to the

young mafiosi in Sicily,

"You guys can come to America.

You can form your own crews.

You'll be under my direction,

and you're gonna make

a lot of money with me."

ANGELA: He knew that this

was gonna be his big shot.

But they wanted him

put away and they succeeded.

(door slams)

(overlapping chatter)

FIORDILINO: Carmine Galante's

been in jail for nearly

a third of his life.

There's a

Sicilian term that says,

"He was a dog

that had no leash."

FIORDILINO: My name

is Fransesco Fiordilino,

and in 2003,

in federal court,

I pled out to

arson, gambling,

distribution of drugs,

m*rder, attempted m*rder,

conspiracy to m*rder,

all while being part of

Bonanno crime family.

Carmine Galante's ego was

bigger than all of New York,

and he wants to be the top.

He wants to be the guy.

CARMINE: While in jail,

Galante thought a lot about

his greatest ambition

to become a boss,

to become somebody

that he wasn't.

At the time he went to jail,

he was the underboss

of the Bonanno family.

But, being the way he was,

that wasn't

good enough for him.

RALPH: Carmine Galante had

problems from an early age,

and he had a long history

of run-ins with the law,

which ended up sending

him to Sing Sing,

where his psychology was

evaluated for the first time.

RALPH: And they found

he had an IQ of 90,

which is below average, a

psychopathic personality.

Even then, he was known to

fly into unaccountable rages.

So, the warning signs

were clearly there.

ANGELA: My dad told

me this story once,

that his father

tried to sell him.

He was so appalled.

I'm sure that that made him

get in with the wrong company.

Even at the early stages,

he feared nothing,

and I think that that

was a big part of him

becoming who he was.

RALPH: In '62, jail offered

many opportunities to keep up

with other mobsters in prison

who he could consult with,

so it was

not a huge impediment to

his criminal business.

But he had to bide his time,

and he couldn't be thinking

anything except that

it was his rightful due to

be the next boss.

CARMINE: Galante got

out after 12 years of

his 20-year sentence.

He was obviously on parole.

He had to abide by

certain conditions,

such as not associating

with criminal cohorts.

But he was hungry to

get back into the game and

enforce his authority.

CARMINE: He wanted to come out

and make more money and be the

king of the heroin

trafficking activities between

Sicily and the United States.

FIORDILINO: In 1972, in

New York, the French Connection,

based out of Marseille,

gets broken up.

RALPH: New York in the 70s

was really downtrodden.

The city was in terrible

financial shape,

a lot of hopelessness

in the streets.

And that, of course,

fostered drug addiction.

And a lot of people

felt helpless and were

driven to drugs.

MAN: Well, I sh**t, maybe,

ten bags a day, three,

three times a day.

REPORTER: And how much

does that cost you?

MAN: Well, it varies

from 20 to $25 a day.

RALPH: It was a very ready

market for Galante's heroin.

FIORDILINO: Carmine started

networking all over the

United States with some of his

old drug dealing friends and had

a little walk and talk about

what they're gonna do.

RALPH: He needs to put

together a new crew of people.

The question is, how can he

be assured of their loyalty,

and that they will defend

him and not turn on him?

DIMATTEO: So he put a

crew together from Sicily,

and they were younger guys.

My name's Frank DiMatteo.

I was part of the Mafia

crime family in the 1970s.

Sicilians always

thought they were better,

'cause they think

they're the root of

the Sicilian Mafia,

and that they do things

properly and we don't.

So, yeah, of course, they

think they're better than us.

And they still do.

They did then, they still do.

To them, we're wild cowboys.

That's what they

called us, "cowboys".

RALPH: One of the sources for

his young Sicilian recruit was

his parent's hometown of

Castellammare del Golfo.

It's very picturesque,

very colorful,

stronghold of the Mafia.

Joe Bonanna came from there,

which gave Galante

his sense of security.

ANGELA: My father should

have been born in Sicily.

That's how Sicilian

my father was.

He trusted Sicilian people more

than he trusted anyone else,

because like the mob,

you're all intertwined,

you're all a family.

GREENBERG: The Sicilians,

and that would include my

father-in-law, were

described as Zips.

And I don't even know what

Zips mean, but I can tell you,

that has a connotation

that gets my Irish up.

It's like saying the

Sicilians are the Dalits

of some caste system,

you know what I mean?

The word is

inherently disgusting,

and I don't accept that.

So, my name is

Howard Greenberg.

I'm a criminal

defense attorney.

And once upon a time,

I was married to the mob.

I remember meeting them at

my house when I lived in

Stonebridge with my then wife.

They were guests of

my father-in-law,

and that really was it.

One of 'em, Cesare Bonventre,

the government alleged

was a bodyguard for Galante,

who stuck to him like glue.

Flashy, in terms of

the jewelry, sunglasses,

and had an appearance straight

out of central casting,

if you ask me.

Along the way,

I also met Amato and he was

also a bodyguard.

Physically, I would

describe him, sort of,

like a teenager, you know.

Salvatore Catalano was

Galante's street boss,

and he had a

nondescript appearance.

He, for all intents

and purposes,

could have been a baker.

Never had anything much,

if anything, to say.

He was as quiet

as a church mouse.

So, he could've been either

a baker or a church mouse.

If they were books,

the Sicilian Mafiosi

would be hardcover,

first edition, first printings.

American wise guys

would be cheap second-hand

versions of paperbacks.

CARMINE: They had

a common mission,

bring the heroin from

Sicily to the

United States at a great scale,

so we can all make money.

The Sicilians made contact

with the remaining members of

the French Connection,

who were still around,

and take them to Sicily

and form their own labs.

And so, Galante, the people

that he had here in New York,

the connections that

he had in Sicily,

here was now the Sicilian

Connection that replaced the

French Connection.

RALPH: But, a street boss for

the Bonanno family who crossed

the Galante faction, and

opposed his foray into drugs,

was an Italian Mafioso

named Peter Licata.

Licata was

against drugs, by all accounts.

DIMATTEO: Street bosses

are a dime a dozen,

but everybody knew

Carmine Galante would k*ll you,

if didn't go along

with his game.

He wasn't a negotiator,

he was a junk dealer.

That's where he

makes his money.

The guy comes out of jail and

you wanna tell him that you

don't think it's a good idea.

Really?

Okay. So, you gotta go.

(honking)

RALPH: Knickerbocker Avenue in

Brooklyn was a stronghold of

the Bonanno family, one of

the five mafia crime families.

There was a so-called

street boss, Peter Licata.

And Licata thought drug

dealing would provide a

problem for the family, and

he said to his underlings,

"First deal,

deal at wholesale,

then you'll deal at retail,

and then it'll

end up destroying the

entire Italian community."

FIORDILINO: He was

not thinking at that time

that he was ruffling some

feathers by saying something

so in your face to somebody

who might just act on it.

'Cause if he did, he probably

wouldn't have said it.

DIMATTEO: He was giving

Carmine's guys a hard time,

and that was not a

smart move on his part.

FIORDILINO: One night,

Licata went home,

he went to his family,

guys came up there, boom.

CARMINE: Peter Licata was

gunned down and m*rder*d.

Lo and behold, who takes

over as street boss of

Knickerbocker Avenue?

Salvatore Catalano.

RALPH: The message

was unmistakable,

don't get in Galante's way.

CARMINE: There was a lot

of upheaval in the Bonanno

family at that time.

Joe Bonanno, the former

boss of the family, had retired.

And the boss of the Bonanno

family, at this time,

was Philip Rastelli.

But Rusty Rastelli

was in jail,

and Galante saw this vacuum.

He figured,

"I'm gonna step in here.

He's out of the picture.

This is what I've really

hoped for all my life,

to be the boss of the family."

At the same time,

Carlo Gambino dies, and

word got out that he not only

wanted to become boss

of the Bonanno family,

but he also wanted to

tackle the Gambino family,

because they had the

most powerful family in

New York at that time.

RALPH: The Gambinos had

a strength of about 1,000

members in New York

in the mid-70s,

as opposed to

the Banannos, only about 200.

When Carlo Gambino dies,

there's clearly a tectonic

shift in the leadership

of the Mafia in New York

at that time.

So, that must've appealed

to Galante as an opportunity.

DIMATTEO: In his mind,

he wanted to

be the boss of bosses.

But, guy's a psychopath

in the first place.

The guy's not a normal guy.

And he wasn't

following any rules,

so it was gonna get dirty.

RALPH: There were

a series of attacks on

Gambino family businesses,

pizza parlors

and other businesses.

CARMINE: A lot of these

pizzerias wound up being

burned to the ground.

Galante said, "Now I'm

gonna set up pizzerias.

And from these pizzerias,

I'm gonna conduct the heroin

trafficking activities."

ANGELA: My father started

opening up pizza restaurants.

I remember he opened

one up not far from my

house on Broadway.

Why he chose pizza places,

I'll never know.

But it was nice getting

free pizza all the time.

PISTONE: Using pizza parlors

made a lot of sense because

they had 'em throughout the

United States and they don't

draw a lot of attention

from law enforcement.

My name is Joseph D. Pistone,

Special Agent of the FBI.

I was undercover in

the Bonanno crime family,

and my undercover name

was Donnie Brasco.

Pizza parlors

was a perfect idea.

Perfect way to run

your cash through,

perfect way to

import the heroin.

CARMINE: The supplies from

Italy were being shipped to

them in containers

that contained tomato cans,

olive cans, pasta.

PISTONE: They'd have false

bottoms on the olive oil cans,

and have the heroin

on the bottom,

and then the olive oil on top.

PISTONE: I think it was,

"We're the big dogs,

and if we wanna

take over something,

we're gonna take it over.

You don't have the

ability to step in and

stop us from doing it."

HAROLD:

Discreetly as possible.

Just kinda keep it low.

HAROLD: Our office

received information,

from one of our local airlines,

that one of their station

managers located in the

Caribbean was contacted by a

drug trafficking organization,

and they enquired if

they could put suitcases

on a flight to Atlanta.

We felt like there were some

ramp agents here in Atlanta,

that were involved

in a conspiracy.

We set up surveillance.

We saw a ramp worker

approach the flight.

This ramp worker was not

scheduled to work the flight,

nor was he scheduled to work

the international concourse.

Alright, gentleman,

the bag has been ripped.

They have it on top

of the tug pulling the

first luggage cart.

They're putting

everything else in a can.

OFFICER: That's it,

right there, right?

HAROLD: Yep.

That's it. He's got it.

Alright, he's pulling

into the main terminal,

so everybody look alive.

OFFICER: There he is.

OFFICER: (over radio) Hey,

have you got any visual yet?

HAROLD: Roger.

He is putting it in the

vehicle at this time.

OFFICER: (over radio)

So, it's been delivered,

delivery's complete?

RALPH: The Mafia had no

shortage of collaborators,

and they found collaborators

at Alitalia Airlines.

They had a baggage handler

who was in on it,

would put the suitcases

aboard the flight.

On the other end,

when the flight landed,

two trusted baggage handlers

would remove the suitcases and

send them on their way

to their destination,

and it didn't attract

any attention.

Those Alitalia suitcases

were worth millions

and millions of dollars,

because the heroin could

be compactly fit in.

So, the incentive was huge.

That's what

increased the appetite

of people like Galante,

that the profits to

be made were extraordinary.

PISTONE: He probably

was grating on Rastelli,

who was in jail,

how Galante was

running the family,

and how he was keeping

all the drug profits.

DIMATTEO: Galante believed

he should be the boss.

And he wasn't kicking up,

but it's a pyramid.

The boss, underboss,

consigliere, captains.

Everybody pays up.

The big guy gets everything.

That's how this thing works.

So, if you're making

trillions of dollars,

you're supposed

to give me my end,

but you didn't give it.

ANGELA: One time,

we went to Florida,

stayed in a hotel.

He was just being

watched constantly,

and all of a sudden,

in the middle of the night,

pounding on the door,

people on the balcony.

It was, like, it was insane.

You'd think they were

taking down, you know,

an army of people,

and it was just my dad.

And when they arrested him,

it was, to me, it was a joke.

PISTONE: Of course, with parole,

you're not supposed

to associate with other

known Mafia members.

But he did violate the parole.

REPORTER: Sir, can you tell me

why you're hiding like that?

(overlapping chatter)

REPORTER: Sir, can you tell me

why you're hiding like that?

PISTONE: Carmine Galante chose,

very shrewdly,

a good lawyer,

who had a long history of

clashing with the establishment,

going back to the

Senator Joseph McCarthy days.

Very powerful lawyer,

very well connected.

ROY: Everything

they've said is totally

incorrect and inaccurate.

REPORTER: You believe

they're not treating your

client fairly, then?

ROY: Pardon me?

No, I just said, it's

just a total publicity stunt,

or all of you

wouldn't be here, right?

REPORTER:

What're you doing here today?

ROY: I'm a lawyer.

RALPH: He became a very

sought-after criminal lawyer.

Very successful in getting

his clients sprung.

GREENBERG: My personal

opinion of Roy Cohn

was that he was sick,

demented,

and in many ways,

worse than the criminals

he represented,

because he

fashioned the pretense

of being their advocate,

when the truth be told,

he was no better than they were.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Ernie, get out!

GREENBERG: He did

not play by the rules.

PHOTOGRAPHER:

Hey, Ernie, come on.

RALPH: 1978, Carmine Galante

goes back to prison

for violating parole.

They should have held

him there, clearly,

because he was consorting

with criminal associates,

violating parole.

But Roy Cohn got him out

of prison in record time.

PISTONE: So, he got

let out early '79.

How that happened,

I don't know.

RALPH: He became very c*ck.

And amazingly, he goes on

60 Minutes, and his lawyer,

Roy Cohn, gets to interview

him and present this simple

Italian man, who likes only

to be growing tomato vines.

CARMINE: I'm

going to the country.

ROY: Good, what're

you gonna do when you get

to the country?

CARMINE: Well, I mean, I

planted peppers last week,

and now I'm gonna

plant tomatoes.

RALPH: And this completely

phony picture of this

mob boss is ludicrous.

ROY: You think that had any

influence on the federal judge

when he held that

you were right,

and the parole

commission was wrong?

CARMINE: I think so,

I think so.

ROY: He thinks the farmer ought

to be able to seed, right?

CARMINE: I think so.

I mean, it's very well

known that that's what I do.

DIMATTEO: When he made those

stupid moves on 60 Minutes,

act like an old man,

it don't work.

You ain't fooling nobody, man.

Forget about you

talking about tomatoes,

wear an old hat,

ripped sweater.

You can't do this.

You can't go public.

It don't work that way.

You're not supposed to that.

CARMINE: He had his own rules,

his own ways of doing things.

He was earning money, he

was also skimming money.

But the Mafia operates

to make money,

and in order to make money,

you have to follow the rules.

If you don't abide

by the rules,

there are repercussions.

RALPH: July 12th, 1979 was

a very hot day in New York.

And a Cadillac was rumbling

its way down the streets of

Bushwick, Brooklyn.

There was a lot of

street life going on.

It was a typical

day in Bushwick.

This Cadillac makes its way

down Knickerbocker Avenue,

and stops outside Joe & Mary,

Italian-American Restaurant,

run by cousins of

Carmine Galante.

And Galante, who was

well-known there,

made his way to the back, and

there was a backyard garden.

The bodyguards he had

taken with him that day were

Cesare Bonventre

and Baldo Amato.

And the mood was set for

a relaxing afternoon.

(overlapping chatter)

(sizzle)

(car doors closing)

(footsteps)

(sizzle)

(overlapping chatter)

(g*n c*ck)

(g*nshots)

(shotgun blast)

DISPATCHER: (over radio)

13-8-61, 13-8-61.

BILL: I was in an unmarked

police car by myself,

and I happened to be just a

couple of blocks away from

Knickerbocker Avenue, when

I hear this job come over.

DISPATCHER: (over radio)

785, no record, NCIC.

ELLEN: Shortly before

3:00 this afternoon,

a blue Chevy pulled up

here in front of

Joe & Mary's restaurant.

Three men got out, wearing

ski masks, armed, shotguns,

automatic weapons.

BILL: And as I get there,

I run into the backyard.

I'm the first detective there,

there was maybe three cops.

I see the dead bodies.

MICHAEL: There are multiple

g*nsh*t and shotgun wounds.

REPORTER: And as a

result of those wounds,

would you say the death was

instantaneous on both parts?

MICHAEL: It would appear that

the death was very rapid.

MAN: Okay, let's go.

Out of the way.

WOMAN: Get out of the way!

ANGELA: My mother called me,

screaming "They k*lled him,

they k*lled him,

they k*lled him."

My mother was destroyed.

She was just destroyed,

'cause she loved him.

She never stopped loving him.

She loved this man.

It amazed me, but it was true.

It was almost surreal,

the whole thing.

I don't think he thought

he would ever die.

He's got that God complex.

He just didn't think

anything could ever,

ever happen to him.

I was very surprised he

wasn't k*lled much sooner,

and that's probably why I

was so shocked when he died,

because now you don't

expect it anymore,

'cause it didn't happen

for such a long time.

Then there was the wake,

which was a joke.

It was a zoo.

Reporters, bah-bah-bah.

RALPH: For the FBI, it was a

big mystery why he was hit,

who was the k*ller.

And that had to be

pieced together.

FIORDILINO: There

was no love lost.

When he passed away, there

was 40 people at his funeral.

There's a reason for that,

nobody liked him.

RALPH: Carmine Galante

was front page news in the

New York Times.

But the big question was, what

about Bonventre and Amato?

That's the question that the

police grappled with later,

and one said,

"It was raining b*ll*ts

and they didn't get wet".

So, how did they

avoid getting mowed down

in that scene of mayhem?

REPORTER: Good evening.

Two men walked into

the Brooklyn DA's office

this afternoon.

The police have been looking

for them ever since

Carmine Galante was

gunned down earlier this month.

Cesare Bonventre and

Baldo Amato were having lunch

with Galante when the

hitmen broke in and k*lled him.

BILL: They had nothing to

help with any investigation.

They took the fifth, so they

were totally useless as far as

the investigation went.

They were supposedly

innocent witnesses to it.

But they didn't know

I spoke Italian,

and there were some

remarks being said,

"Watch what you

say to this guy",

and everything, in Italian.

So, I knew they were

not gonna level with me.

CARMINE: Not only did they

see Cesare Bonventre and

Baldo Amato show up,

but Salvatore Catalano.

That really piqued

our interest,

because one of the suspects

was heard coming into the

place being mentioned

by the name "Sal".

CARMINE: As a result, it was

suspected that Sal Catalano

also participated in the

m*rder of Carmine Galante.

PISTONE: Galante put a lot

of trust in Cesare and Baldo.

They had to be on the set up.

And they saw the opportunity,

they figured they're gonna

make a bigger piece of the pie

with Galante out of the way,

so they snatched it.

PISTONE: They were definitely

in on the conspiracy

from the get-go.

And also, Cesare Bonventre

got up to Capo,

he became the captain

in the family.

And Sal Catalano became

the boss of Sicilians.

DIMATTEO: All three of them were

100% offered a better deal.

I think it was like an

offer you couldn't refuse.

RALPH: There were many clues.

One was that the boss

of the Bonanno family,

Phil Rusty Rastelli,

got an excessive number of

visits in prison before the hit,

and that was pretty telling.

BILL: It was surveillance

of the Ravenite Social Club.

And when a call came over

about Galante being k*lled,

they started filming

everybody coming and going.

PISTONE: The Ravenite was

a Gambino social club.

And after the hit went down,

a guy by the name of

Bruno Indelicato shows up,

and he's seen talking with

the underboss of the

Gambinos at the time.

RALPH: Bruno Indelicato

seemed to be getting quite

some attention outside the club.

And later, they put it

together that, perhaps,

he had something to do

with the k*lling of Galante and

was being congratulated.

PISTONE: So, right there,

it shows you that the Gambinos

sanctioned it, and if the

Gambinos sanctioned it,

all the other bosses

sanctioned it.

CARMINE: The authority to

assassinate Carmine Galante

had to be authorized by

the so-called "Commission"

of the Mafia.

RALPH: It had to have

been some kind of

high-level decision,

because bosses, or underbosses,

don't get whacked on a whim

by some lower soldier, or capo.

It's a Commission

decision usually.

CARMINE: He had done

things against the Mafia rule.

They had to make an

example of Galante.

It was a daylight assassination

to send a message that,

"We are the ones who rule.

The rules are

not to be broken".

BILL: Once I started

the investigation of

the death of Galante,

I kept winding up

in a pizzeria after pizzeria.

The Mafia at that time

was considered involved in

bookmaking and possession

of stolen property,

and all that stuff.

But I don't think anybody

really knew how involved they

were in the importing of

drugs into the country.

RALPH: The k*lling of Galante

was the key to opening up this

vast drug conspiracy

that became known as

the Pizza Connection.

It became unimaginably

important in shifting the

focus of the FBI from

individual cases to a broader

perspective of prosecuting

drug organizations.

It was really the linchpin

to a vast revolution in

law enforcement, not only

in the United States,

but in Italy and

around the world,

in terms of awareness of the

international drug conspiracy.

ANGELA: He followed

the American dream,

at least what his mind thought

was the American dream.

You start at the bottom

and you work your way up.

Then, eventually, you're gonna

be at the top, and he was.

He just went about

it the wrong way.