Donnie Brasco (2 page)

In the middle of the courtroom, half hidden in the crowd, a Bonanno Mafia family associate I had seen around Little Italy but whose name I didn’t know aimed his hand like a pistol and silently pulled the imaginary trigger with his forefinger. At a break in the trial, agents protecting me got the guy in the hallway and talked to him. He never came back.

I had been undercover inside the Mafia for six years. All that time, no more than a handful of people in the world knew who I was in both real life and in the Mafia. Now there was this explosion in the media.

There were huge headlines in the press, some of them covering the front pages: G-MAN CONNED THE MOB FOR SIX YRS; SECRET AGENT BARES MOB DEALS; MAN WHO CONNED THE MOB; FBI UNCOVERS MOB SUPERAGENT; “BRASCO” FACES GRILLING TODAY.
Newsweek
had a full page entitled, “I Was a Mobster for the FBI.” They also indicated the threats: MAFIA SEEKS REVENGE ON DARING INFILTRATOR; MOB IS TRACKING FBI-ER WHO FOOLED BONANNO FAMILY.

Before the trial, the media knew that a primary witness would be an FBI undercover agent who had infiltrated the Mafia. They were using every angle to try to find out who it really was. Once the trial began, reporters were always trying to get to me. I had never given an interview, never allowed the press to photograph or film me. We’d finish up in court at five P.M., have to hang around until eight or nine to avoid the press, and even then we’d go out through the marshals’ lockup. We couldn’t go out of the building to eat lunch, or out of the hotel to eat dinner.

Before the first trial began, we had definite word of a hit contract out on my life. The Mafia bosses had offered $500,000 to anybody who could find me and kill me. They had circulated pictures of me all over the country. We thought we’d better take some precautions. The federal prosecutors petitioned the court to allow me and another agent I had worked with during the final year to withhold our real names when testifying and use the undercover names the mob knew us by: Donnie Brasco and Tony Rossi.

Presiding Judge Robert W. Sweet, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, was sympathetic. In his ruling he wrote, “... there can be no question but that these agents were, are and will be at risk. Certainly their performance as set forth by the government establishes their courage, heroism and skill as front line fighters in the war against crime and entitles them to every appropriate protection [which includes] the withholding of the location of their homes, family situation, and any additional information which is of tangential relevance and might increase their exposure to risk.”

But he denied our motion because of constitutional rights of defendants to confront their accusers. I felt neither betrayed nor surprised. There were never any guarantees.

My real name was not revealed until the first day I testified, when I walked into the courtroom, raised my right hand, and swore to tell the truth. Then I was asked to give my name, and I gave it, for the first time publicly in six years: Joseph D. Pistone.

All those years undercover in the mob, I had been lying every day, living a lie. I was lying for what I believed was a high moral purpose: to help the United States government destroy the Mafia. Nonetheless, I was constantly aware that eventually, on the witness stand, I was going to be confronted with the fact by defense attorneys: You lied all the time then; how can anybody believe you now?

Before, everything, including my life, had been riding on the lie. Now everything was riding on the truth.

When I was undercover, with every step I took I had to think: How will this seem when I testify? I had to be absolutely clean. Money had to be accounted for. I had to document what I could, and remember what I couldn’t document. Finally it would come down to my word in front of the juries.

The two prosecutors in the very first trial, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jones and Louis Freeh, continually drove the point home to me: “No matter how much evidence we put on, the jury has to believe you. Without your credibility we have nothing.”

From the day I ended my undercover role, July 26, 1981, I was deluged with trial preparations and testimony.

I was in a whirlwind. There was nonstop work with U.S. Attorneys seeking indictments of Mafia members and preparing for trials on racketeering, gambling, extortion, and murder in New York, Milwaukee, Tampa, and Kansas City. I worked with FBI officials at Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to prepare other cases across the nation where my testimony wasn’t needed but my information was. As the weeks and months went by, I was working with the prosecutors, testifying before grand juries, and testifying in trials all at once.

In New York City alone, home of the main Mafia families, there were at times five or six Mafia trials going on at once. Trials coming out of our investigations got famous, such as “The Pizza Connection,” the biggest heroin-smuggling case, and “The Mafia Commission,” the trial of the entire ruling body of the Mafia. Because I had been living within the Mafia for so long, I had information relevant to them all, and I testified at all of them. I would be testifying in more than a dozen trials in a half dozen cities over a span of five years.

Ultimately we would get more than a hundred federal convictions. By 1987, the combination of undercover agents, street agents, cops, U.S. Attorneys, and informants had blasted the heart out of La Cosa Nostra. The Mafia would be changed forever. The boss of every single Mafia family would be indicted and/or in prison and/or dead before the trials were over. We got almost every Mafia soldier we went after.

But the scorecard after all those years wasn’t the scorecard right then. In August 1982, we were just launching the courtroom assault that resulted from the years of undercover work and “straight-up” investigation. There wasn’t the time or inclination to celebrate. We had stung and humiliated the Mafia, but now, because of that, the Mafia was stirred up like a hornets’ nest. The mob was killing its own. Anybody who had trusted me inside the mob was now dead, or targeted for death. A dozen mobsters I knew when I was undercover had been murdered, at least two specifically because of their association with me. One indicted corrupt cop had committed suicide.

For me, there was testifying to do. And I had to avoid the shooters.

In Milwaukee, when I was testifying against Milwaukee Mafia boss Frank Balistrieri, a defense attorney asked me where I and my family actually lived while I was undercover. The prosecution objected. U.S. District Judge Terence T. Evans directed me to answer. Nothing could have forced me to answer that. “Your Honor,” I said, “I am not going to answer the question.” The judge said he could hold me in contempt. But after consultation with the lawyers he decided that what was relevant was only where the mob thought I lived at the time. Then I answered that question: “California.”

My home address and the name my family was living under was a closely guarded secret, and has not been revealed to this day. The FBI installed a special alarm system throughout the house that was wired directly to the FBI office.

Once my real name was splashed around in the media, we got word from a friendly attorney that a New Jersey guy that I grew up with, now in the Genovese family, had gone to Fat Tony Salerno, the boss of the Genovese family, and told him he knew where I was from and where I still had relatives, so maybe they could get at me that way.

When I talked to my daughters by telephone, they were in tears. Grandpa was afraid to go out and start his car in the morning.

The FBI wanted to move my family again. I refused. They didn’t want to move again. I wasn’t going to run the rest of my life. These bastards weren’t going to make me or my family live in fear forever. Could they find me? I take normal precautions. I’m always tail-conscious wherever I am. I travel and have credit cards under various names. But with an all-out effort, sure, they could find me. Nobody’s an impossibility. But if they found me, they would have to deal with me. The guy who came after me would have to be better than I was.

I was forty-three years old when the first of the cases came to trial. I had missed six years of normal life with my family. There were huge gaps of experience with my daughters growing up. I hoped that in time this would be balanced by the pride in what I had done, but I never will be able to be a public person. I will always have to use a different name in my private life, and only close friends and associates will know about my FBI past.

My satisfactions are in the knowledge that I did the best job I could, that we made the cases, and that other agents—my peers—congratulate me and respect me for what I did. My family is proud of me.

I am proud of the fact that I was the same Joe Pistone when I came out as I was before I went undercover. Six years inside the Mafia hadn’t changed me. My personality hadn’t changed. My values hadn’t changed. I wasn’t messed up mentally or physically. I still didn’t drink. I still kept my body in shape. I had the same wife, the same good marriage, the same good kids. I hadn’t had difficulty giving up the Donnie Brasco role. I was not confused about who I was. My pride was that whatever my personality was, whatever my strengths and weaknesses, I was Joe Pistone when I went under, and I was the same Joe Pistone when I came out.

After one trial in New York a defense attorney congratulated me: “You did a hell of a job. You got some set of balls, Agent Pistone.”

At another trial years later, in 1986, Rusty Rastelli, boss of the Bonanno family, which I had infiltrated, waited in a hallway outside the courtroom of the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. He sat in a chair like a throne, with other defendants, Bonanno wiseguys, gathered around him like an entourage. None of them wanted to believe, or admit, even now, what had been done to them. “Even if I wasn’t in the can,” Rastelli said, “he wouldn‘ta met me.” “He don’t know nobody,” one of his members said, “not in six years.” A daughter of one of the defendants was brought over to meet Rastelli. She said about me, the agent testifying against them all, “What a dangerous job. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”

On January 17, 1983, I went with my wife and brother to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual presentation of the Attorney General’s Awards. Before the ceremonies we had lunch with FBI Director William Webster and his assistant directors in his private dining room in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, which is FBI headquarters.

The ceremonies were held in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. The room was jammed with dignitaries and government officials.

Among the awards was one for me. Attorney General William French Smith and FBI Director Webster presented me with the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award as the outstanding agent in the FBI. They cited my length of service undercover, how no agent had ever penetrated so deep into the Mafia before, and how much personal sacrifice was required. I got a big round of applause.

Next to testifying in my first Mafia trial, this was the best moment in my professional life.

THE BEGINNINGS

I was working out of the Alexandria, Virginia, office in my second year on the job. We had been chasing a bank-robbery fugitive for about a month, just missing him several times. I and my partner, Jack O‘Rourke, got a tip that he was going to be at a certain apartment in next-door Washington, D.C., for about a half hour. We alerted the D.C. office so they could send a couple cars, and we took off for the place. When we pulled up, we saw this guy coming down the stairs.

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