01x02 - The Godfather Tapes

[bunniefuu]

-[static crackles]

-My fellow citizens,

I'd like to speak to you tonight

about our future,

about a great historic effort

to give the words freedom,

fairness, and hope

new meaning and power

for every man and woman in America.

[man 1] The early eighties

was a golden era of our life, the Mob.

New York was the seat of power

for that life all over America.

A special police task force has been

assigned to investigate a long string

of shootings and murders

in Manhattan and Queens.

-[blows landing]

-We were always loan sharks.

We were always bookmakers.

And we were always drug dealers.

But we diversified

like you would in stock.

It's not just one industry.

You too can help us unlock the doors

to a golden future.

You too can become leaders

in this great new era of progress,

the age of the entrepreneur.

We prospered because

we infiltrated every fabric of society,

from the guy on the street

with the numbers business,

all the way up to unions.

Police in New Jersey say the death

of two longshoreman officials

may also be Mob-related.

[man 4]

The problem with what the Mafia had done,

which no other organized

crime group ever did before,

was instead of just being

an organized crime group,

doing m*rder, doing extortion,

doing loan-sharking, doing gambling,

doing prostitution,

they put their tentacles

into legitimate society.

They controlled the fish market.

They controlled restaurants

in New York City.

They controlled the transportation

of our products.

They controlled the garment industry.

They had judges they put on the bench.

They had hospitals they controlled.

The docks, the ships

I can go on and on.

[Reagan] There is no instrument

of hard work, savings, and job creation

as effective as the family.

The American dream belongs to you.

["Hard Times"

by Baby Huey & the Baby Sitters plays]

Cold, cold eyes upon me

They stare ♪

People all around me

And they're all in fear ♪

So I play the part

I feel they want of me ♪

And I pull the shades

So I won't see them seein' me ♪

Havin' hard times in this crazy town ♪

Havin' hard times

There's no love to be found ♪

Havin' hard times in this crazy town ♪

Havin' hard times

There's no love to be found ♪

-[song ends]

-[knob clicks]

[static crackling]

[indistinct chatter on radio]

[man 1] this way they can get money

and keep their jobs.

[indistinct speaking]

[man 2]

The intention was to develop a RICO case

against each of the Mafia families.

We decided that we would tap

five family squads.

And all the information

about that particular family

would only go to that one squad.

There was the Gambino squad,

the Genovese squad,

Colombo, Lucchese,

and the Bonanno squad.

The purpose of this was

to collect the information

about each of those families,

either from wiretaps,

or from informants,

or from surveillance,

to go after the hierarchy of the family

and their involvement

with the labor unions,

until you got enough evidence

that you could use that to bring

the whole organization down.

[man 1] Well, he said they

they gave me $200.

[distorted] Two hundred dollars

[man 2] It was July of 1982.

I'm assigned to the Colombo Squad.

Gennaro Langella was acting boss

of the Colombo family.

They were engaged in all the traditional

organized crime activities:

loan-sharking,

ill*gal gambling,

theft from interstate shipment, hijacking.

-[g*nsh*t]

-[crowd screaming]

[Joyce] And, of course,

m*rder when they had to.

But we needed evidence

to put together prosecutable cases.

While we're surveilling Gennaro Langella,

we see that on Fridays,

he would go to the Casa Storta restaurant.

It was an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn.

And it turned out to be a meeting place

for the hierarchy of the Colombo family.

My supervisor says to me,

"John, I have an assignment for you.

You're gonna be charged with getting a bug

in the Casa Storta restaurant."

The idea was to scope it out

and to figure out where to put this bug.

I tried to be interested in the food,

the table, and my date.

But what I'm really looking around for

was where they're seated.

Gennaro Langella and the Mob guys

are in the banquet room

where they're playing cards.

I tried to act as normal as possible.

Typically, when you're in a restaurant,

you've gotta go to bathroom.

The place is just swarming with Mob guys.

I didn't look them in the eye.

I didn't identify who was there,

what they were doing.

I just wanted to see

where they were sitting.

At that point, now you've got

a good layout of the place.

You have a real good idea of where

they're spending their time

and where to place the bug.

[man] In Casa Storta,

we had some new challenges.

We had a dog to deal with.

Her name was Nina.

She was about 150 pounds.

She was an Italian bullmastiff.

And when you were having dinner,

Nina was walking around the restaurant,

and if you didn't like the fact

that Nina was joining you for dinner,

go eat some place else.

You have to think like a criminal.

And I saw that there was

no alarm-related issue to deal with.

There was no back or side door

that I could, you know, put ajar.

There was nothing other than

we had to go in through the front door.

First, we get the lock guys

to work on the locks.

[dog growling]

[barking]

[barks]

[Cantamessa] Nina is throwing herself

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

We're ready to do the entry,

and instead of me being the first one in,

Arthur with his injectable is gonna in.

But he's having anxiety

over how old Nina is.

He's not sure he should poke her,

'cause none of us wants

to harm any animal.

Once the door opens,

Nina backs up a little bit.

He sticks his leg in the door

to sort of shoo her.

[loud growling]

[Cantamessa] She grabs his boot,

backs up,

closing his leg in the door

and he is stuck.

We have to protect ourselves.

The worst case, you'd have to sh**t a dog.

Backup-plan-Kenny,

he comes to the rescue

with the CO2 fire extinguisher.

[fire extinguisher gushing]

Nina lets go,

backs up,

walks into the coat room,

and goes in her bed.

Just like that.

We get the job done,

installing a microphone above the table

and we're out of there.

[tape deck clicks, whirs]

[Joyce] With a restaurant you have

a lot of ambient noise.

Lots of people inside,

all talking at the same time,

some of them talking very loudly

[garbled, indistinct chatter

over headphones]

laughing, yelling.

You have dishes.

You have glasses clattering.

Silverware being dropped.

So it presented a real challenge

listening to those Mob guys.

But then we hear

Gennaro Langella, the underboss.

[Joyce] At that point,

two Mob guys enter the restaurant,

and we hear them being greeted.

And I hear one of them say,

"That wire looks like it doesn't belong."

[static, indistinct chatter]

[mic feed cuts out]

Next thing I know, everything goes dead.

They were on to us.

[Alite] We realized

that there was bugs everywhere.

[man] There's FBI all around, watching.

The club's bugged.

The car is bugged.

Sometimes, one of the guys

you're talking to has--

He's wearing a wire on his body.

[man] I had f*cking agents all around.

They're looking for me.

[Alite] Sure you know what you're doing?

They've wired up parking meters.

They wired up bushes.

They wired up homes.

[man] Where've you been?

I got the mic on me.

[distorted, garbled speech]

And if you make the wrong move,

and a lot of guys have,

they end up dead for it,

and a lot of guys in jail for it.

[man] He has dreams, this guy.

Wait a minute.

Do you realize you're talking

to serious people?

[distorted] serious people

You're the one that f*cked everything up.

I didn't do nothin'

[typewriter clacking]

[man 1] In 1981,

I was asked to investigate

the Lucchese crime family's influence

in the garbage collection industry

on Long Island.

At that point we knew

Tony "Ducks" Corallo was the boss

of the Lucchese crime family.

[man 2] Tony "Ducks" grew up

on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

And he became a soldier many, many years

before and rose in the ranks.

And he eventually took over

the crime family and became the boss.

I was assigned to the unit

that did backgrounds and intelligence

on organized crime.

So we knew Tony "Ducks" was a character.

His nickname was because he had

this ability to duck subpoenas,

and when they were coming

to arrest him on something,

he was never home.

He was ducking out.

He was cagey,

real old-school.

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

low profile.

But a boss.

[Goldstock] Our investigators

start making inroads

into the Lucchese crime family.

And we eventually worked our way up

from informants, to wire taps,

to ultimately identifying Sal Avellino.

[O'Hara] Sal Avellino was a soldier

in the Lucchese crime family.

A Long Island guy.

He drove a black Jaguar, four-door.

[Goldstock]

We learned two things about Avellino.

One is that he was the industry

specialist for garbage

in the Lucchese crime family.

And the second thing was that he drove

Tony "Ducks" Corallo in his Jaguar.

He became his chauffeur, his confidant.

So we knew, obviously,

that they were discussing

issues that would be of importance to us

and provide evidence for us.

But to get the warrant,

to put a bug in the car,

was extraordinarily difficult.

[Goldstock] The question was

how you prove to a court

that the two individuals in the car

would be having conversations

about a particular crime.

[thunder rumbles]

[Kossler] Ron Goldstock called me up and

he told me, "This is what we're doing."

They needed probable cause to get

authority to put a bug in that Jaguar.

I spoke to my agents.

[man] Costa said,

"What do we know about this?"

So I needed to see one

of my Lucchese informants.

Meeting the informants

was always a concern,

because the last thing

you needed to do was be seen

because that would be

the end of the informant.

He would be k*lled.

I had a hotel room in Midtown.

I'd call the informants and say,

"Alright, meet me at the usual spot."

What I needed to know:

Does Anthony Corallo

discuss family business

with Sal Avellino when they're driving?

The answer is: "Yes, he does."

And if you get a couple of sources,

very good sources,

that say the same thing,

that's enough to satisfy a judge

to get a warrant to bug the car.

[O'Hara] The plan was

to bug the Jaguar so that we could listen

to the conversations

of designated people

while they were in that car.

[Goldstock] It was only a question

of how we were going to intercept

the conversations.

And so, we got an identical car.

And we started to work on the car.

These were really superb technicians.

They started taking it apart

and putting the bug in various places,

then putting it back together again,

testing it out, taking it on the road,

seeing where there was noise,

seeing where there was interference,

seeing where you could

get the best quality.

And they determined

somewhere behind the heater.

Once they knew where they wanted

to put the bug,

now they started timing themselves.

[ticking]

And they did it again.

And then they did it again.

And then they did it again,

until they were satisfied

it was the fastest

they could possibly do it.

The team was ready to bug the car.

Now, we just had to wait

for the right opportunity.

[thunder rumbles]

[Goldstock] One night, Avellino

pulled his car into a location

where there was some event

being conducted, and it was a rainy night.

He came late, which meant

that the closer-in spots were taken.

So he had to park

away from the building itself.

We followed them into the building.

Once we saw him go in,

we gave the signal

for the tech team to go.

[O'Hara] The opportunity was now.

[Goldstock] Because it was raining,

they carried plastic with them.

The door opened with the key

that we got from Jaguar.

The plastic went in.

We didn't know whether or not

the recording would actually work.

[garbled speech]

[O'Hara] The first day that we followed

the Jaguar was a learning process,

because most wiseguys, Mafia guys,

they ride their rear view mirror.

They want to see what's behind them.

The van had the recording equipment,

monitor, and the whereforall

to record all the conversations.

And if they would've seen a blue van

too many times,

they're certain to feel:

"Are we being followed?"

[O'Hara] So we would have

three or four chase cars,

all different makes, models, and colors.

And they had a piece of equipment

in their car called a "repeater."

The would receive the signal

being put out by the transmitter,

and that repeater would increase

the power of the transmitter

to allow the van

to be a little further away.

[garbled chatter on radio]

To keep the signal,

the repeater car had to stay close.

[Alite] When you're driving a car,

the FBI was always on our mind.

You know, a lot of people drive real fast

to see if they would follow,

if there's several cars following you.

Then there's guys that were

a little smarter. They would tell me,

"What are you driving fast for?

Drive slow."

If you drive real slow,

you're gonna notice them,

'cause they're driving real slow.

If they're gonna make

a right-hand turn down a street,

you don't turn right behind them.

You lay back. You kind of sneak up

until he's into the next block

and you kind of take a peek.

You're playin' hide and seek now.

Sometimes, you might get a couple of cars

in between you and him.

That could cause a problem.

I'd think that we're too smart for them.

It ain't gonna be me.

It'll be the next guy gettin' caught.

I won't get caught.

So we would run red lights.

[O'Hara]

If he makes the red light and we don't

Well, we don't wanna

wash out the whole day.

So there were times when you might

have to go up on the sidewalk

to get around cars

that are stopped for a red light

and then carefully

go through the red light.

Some take evasive action, such as going

around the block two or three times.

Thank God Sal did not do it,

which made following him a little easier.

[garbled speech]

[O'Hara] The bug was working.

It was like hearing a novel

being read to you about the Mob.

Sal went away one time.

And when he came home from vacation

and he went to start his car,

it didn't work.

Oh, sh*t!

We k*lled the battery,

because the bug was wired to the battery.

So fortunately we had wiretaps

on a couple of telephones.

And we heard Sal call the car company,

complaining.

"I want you to come pick up the car

and fix it once and for all."

So sh*t, how do we do this now?

We gotta disconnect the bug,

then they can do all the tests they want,

and they won't find it,

because it won't be draining electricity.

A flatbed comes

and drives away with the car.

We had a uniformed Suffolk County

highway unit stop the truck.

And as luck would have it,

the driver of the tow truck

had a suspended driver's license.

So they got him away from his rig

and over towards the police car,

which allowed one of our technicians

to get into the Jaguar,

disconnect the bug,

and get out,

all within about 45 seconds.

That presented problem number two.

How do we reconnect it?

About two days later,

Sal went to a meeting

with Tony "Ducks" to a restaurant,

right off the Long Island Expressway.

They were sitting in the window,

and they could see the parking lot.

We pulled the van in

to block the view of the car.

We confirmed the bug was working

and off we went,

and we were running again.

[O'Hara] The recordings

about the sanitation industry

on Long Island were very important.

Here, you're showing the influence,

the control of the Mafia over an industry.

Total control over the industry.

And the money, the economic harm

it was doing to commerce was astronomical.

They controlled the association.

They controlled the union.

So they controlled the basic cost

of picking up the garbage.

I own a store.

I have to use this garbage guy.

I have no choice,

and I have to pay him what he wants.

There is no competition.

If you don't cooperate with the Mob,

you might get k*lled.

[reporter] The sanitation men

had reported to work before 6:00.

But then a quiet morning became violent

when a g*nman entered the office.

[O'Hara] It was more than gold dust.

This was gold nuggets.

The recordings that were being made

could take down

the bosses of the Lucchese crime family.

[Kossler] In the mid-'80s,

there came a time

when we would have as many as 25 bugs

and wiretaps going in a given time.

[man] What if you can't prove

that he's a man of honor?

[overlapping indistinct chatter]

[Kossler] We're getting a great picture.

We were identifying

those industries and unions

that had to be cleaned up.

[Kossler] We had developed

a lot of evidence

against two of the Five Families,

but the Genovese family

was the most important above all else.

They were the biggest Mafia family

in the country.

If we were gonna take down the Mafia,

we have to get Fat Tony Salerno.

[typewriter clacking]

[man] We started looking

at Fat Tony in 1983.

From the perspective of the FBI,

looking at the Genovese family,

Fat Tony Salerno was the ultimate target.

For the most part,

while we were watching him,

he was at the Palma Boys Social Club

on 115th Street in East Harlem,

which was a strong Italian enclave.

As a New Yorker,

you saw the heartbreak of people that were

being targeted by organized crime.

Mom and pop people who were trying to make

a go of it here were being shaken down.

I just saw the Mob as

you know, vicious, vicious people

who were praying on victims, you know.

So I took it personally, yeah, I did.

We would conduct surveillances

just to see what Fat Tony's routine was.

He would come in every Monday morning.

And then he would go home

every Thursday morning.

Those three days, he would spend

in the Palma Boys Social Club.

If you've ever seen The Godfather

when Marlon Brando is

at his daughter's wedding

and people are being shuttled in

and shuttled out,

that was Tony Salerno.

He sat in that club, and neighbors would

come in, and they would have issues

that they hoped that he would help.

Tony was like a god in the community.

He was like the fixer.

[Franzese] I'll tell you a Fat Tony story.

He sent for me one day,

so I go see him in his social club.

He's sitting down, and he's got

the cigar and the fedora.

And he says, "Michael,

let me ask you something."

He says, "I got these five mamalukes

around me. They can't earn five cents."

He says, "You give them a job?"

I said, "Yeah, I'll give them a job, Tony.

Anything you want. You're the boss."

He said, "How much you gonna

pay them every week?"

So I'm thinking about it.

I don't wanna insult the boss.

I said, "Tony how about I give them

1,500 in cash a week?"

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

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

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

Whatever you want."

There was a presence about him that you

just knew he was the guy in control.

[French] What we determined

through sources and informants

was that he was meeting

with people from the various unions.

They were also discussing gambling,

rackets, bribery, and family business.

That gave us

some pretty good probable cause

to figure that we could get

a court order for a bug.

It was going to be a very big day

for this investigation.

We saw Tony "Ducks" Corallo

walk into the Palma Boys Social Club.

[Kossler] Tony "Ducks" Corallo,

the boss of the Lucchese family,

was meeting with Fat Tony Salerno,

the boss of the Genovese family.

And we had this on tape.

All of a sudden, we're getting

these nuggets of great conversations.

We started to realize there was

much more interaction between the bosses

than we ever knew.

At one point the boss

of the Buffalo family came to see Fat Tony

and was describing the conflict

within the family, and Fat Tony told him,

"Well, you go back and tell your people

that Tony said this is coming

from the Commission."

[overlapping chatter]

[Kossler] The Commission was something

that informants had talked about for years

and said that they controlled what

the organized crime families did

and how they worked.

[Kossler] From what we were hearing

on the bugs,

we were getting a much better picture of

what the Commission was and what it did

than we had ever done before.

[Kossler] We learned the Commission

was made up

of the bosses of the Five Families

in New York.

They were there to set up the rules

for all the families

all across the country,

because disputes are bad for business.

And the Commission was in the position

to settle disputes or to

order that somebody be k*lled

to settle a dispute.

The conversations showed

that the five bosses in the Commission

had a tremendous control of a lot

of different industries

and legitimate businesses.

And then, not only that,

the bosses were in business together.

[Alite] A lot of times, different families

work with each other,

depending on what the situation is.

If it's something that the Commission

of the Mob agrees on,

they'll send somebody

from any of the families or jointly.

It's a collaboration of making money,

is what the street's about.

It's not about fighting each other.

It's not about killin' each other.

At the end of the day,

it's about making a dollar together.

[Kossler] The idea of the existence

of the Commission was a big deal

because it puts all

the bosses of the family

into the same criminal conspiracy.

It became more and more apparent

that this is really where

we should focus our efforts.

It's high noon Sunday,

and I'm Gabe Pressman.

Just one year ago, Rudolph Giuliani

was appointed US Attorney

for the Southern District of New York.

It's been called the most prestigious

prosecutor's job in the United States.

Giuliani has been described

as a man with a passion

[Giuliani] I am an Italian-American.

I was born in New York City.

I grew up in Brooklyn.

I was a tough kid. I was a boxer.

I was taught not to be afraid of anything.

Could have I ended up a wiseguy?

Sure, I could have.

But in the '70s,

I became an assistant US attorney.

And when the position of US Attorney

of the Southern District opened up

that was my dream job.

I got to see everything

the FBI were doing about organized crime.

And I realized

they were being much more successful.

They had a much better picture

of organized crime.

I always hated the Mafia.

They do terrible things to society.

They began by exploiting

Italian immigrants

like my grandfathers.

One was a barber. The other was a tailor.

And the minute they established

a little business and made a little money,

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

And you'd say,

"No. Why do I give you 30%?"

"'Cause we're gonna burn you down

if you don't give us 30.

We're gonna beat you up

or beat up your kid."

When I began the position of US Attorney,

I was reading all the files

I could about the Mafia cases.

I got to this section

about the Commission.

The Commission

is the executive board of the Mafia.

They're the highest body

that governs the Mafia in New York.

It's run like a business.

It's like a board meeting.

So I envisioned the idea of using RICO

to go after the bosses of

all these families in one very big case:

the Commission Case.

If you can k*ll

the monster from the head,

this is our one chance to do it.

[typewriter clacks]

The US Attorney's Office has 150 lawyers.

They're all excellent.

You've got about ten that are

really superstars.

Mike Chertoff is one of those ten.

[man 1] My unit chief said,

"You know, Rudy Giuliani has this idea

of prosecuting the board of directors

of the Mafia.

And he would like you

to work as his deputy."

I'd been in the US Prosecutor's Office

for probably less than a year.

I was, by any measure,

still a baby prosecutor.

No question it was gonna be

a baptism of fire.

I would be the lead prosecutor

with the other two members

of the trial team,

John Savarese and Gil Childers.

[man 2] For me,

coming from an Italian-American heritage,

the dark side of that immigrant history

that the Mafia represents

was a horrible stain.

And it was definitely part

of my own personal motivation

for wanting to work on this case.

[man 3] When I was asked to do this,

I had just turned 29.

It was quite a vote of confidence in us,

but quite honestly,

mostly in Mike and John.

The two of them had intellectual

candlepower that could light the city.

[Savarese]

Rudy Giuliani really deserves credit

for coming up with the idea

of bringing a commission case

that would sit atop

these Five Family cases

that were also being brought.

It was really his brainstorm.

He wanted to use RICO in a way

that had never been used before.

I mean, this was probably

the biggest organized crime case ever.

The question was "could we find

the evidence to make that case?"

[DeVecchio]

The boss asked me to come to his office

and said, "I got a case for you.

We want to indict all of the bosses

of the five organized crime families

in New York at the same time."

I said, "What, are you sh1tting me?

You want what?"

I mean, you're talking

about a major operation,

all the bosses of all five families.

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

[Savarese] To make a RICO case,

you've gotta show

that it's an independent enterprise,

that there is this thing

called the Commission.

[DeVecchio] My agents went to every squad

and got

transcripts of every wiretap, every bug.

Was the Commission mentioned?

How was it mentioned?

What contacts between who?

And then what did they discuss?

[Savarese] You got to show that

these individuals are connected to it,

they want to be part of it,

and they're lending their effort to it.

Second, you got to connect it

to a series of underlying crimes.

So what were those crimes?

What really proved critical

was the investigation

of the Casa Storta restaurant.

[Joyce] I had been charged

with getting a bug

in the Casa Storta restaurant

the meeting place for the Colombo family.

But they found the first bug.

So we had to have the entry team

get back in there, reconnect the wires,

hide them a little better

than the last time,

and do it all-- start all over again.

[tape deck clicks]

[indistinct sounds playing

over headphones]

And we started getting conversations that

had some value to the Commission case.

[clicks]

[clicks]

You're hearing references

to Paul Castellano,

boss of the Gambino family,

references to Tony "Ducks."

Tony "Ducks" Corallo, he's the boss

of the Lucchese family.

You're hearing references

to Fat Tony Salerno,

boss of the Genovese family.

And then I hear, they're throwing out

all these other names.

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

What was that?

And they were using these names

in the context

of various intersections in Manhattan.

Thirty-fourth and First.

York Avenue.

We had no idea

what they were talking about.

We knew it was important, because they're

talking about the bosses of the family.

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

My boss picks up the phone book.

He looks up X.L.O.

He looks up North Berry.

He said,

"These are all construction companies,

and they're all in the cement business."

He said, "This is unbelievable.

He says, "This is the concrete industry.

This is construction in Manhattan."

So we went out to 34th and 1st.

Saw that it was

an enormous construction project,

a giant hole in the ground.

It's gonna be huge.

This is multimillion dollars.

This is big leagues.

So we know then we're onto something big.

Construction in Manhattan

at that time was mind-boggling.

There was buildings going up

almost on every block.

The city was offering

tax incentives for construction.

Hundreds of millions of dollars

of construction underway

at any given time.

This game was making the Mob

tens of millions of dollars on one job.

And there was 50 jobs.

The complexity of the conspiracy

was stunning.

We're literally talking

a billion-dollar operation.

But once we figured it out,

then we were able to bring a case

against the Commission itself.

[intense instrumental music playing]