Fear City: New York vs the Mafia (2020) s01e02 Episode Script

1
-[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 murder, 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,
illegal gambling,
theft from interstate shipment, hijacking.
-[gunshot]
-[crowd screaming]
[Joyce] And, of course,
murder 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 shoot 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 fucking 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 fucked 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 killed.
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, shit!
We killed 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 shit, 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 killed.
[reporter] The sanitation men
had reported to work before 6:00.
But then a quiet morning became violent
when a gunman 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 killed
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 kill
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 shitting 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]