WEBVTT - 3 - Bugging the Bosses 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:06.520 You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:10.039 production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts. 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:17.520 In the Criminal Justice System, landmark trials transcend the courtroom 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.320 to reshape the law. The brave man and women who 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.599 investigate and prosecute these cases are part of a select 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:27.400 group that is defined American history. These are their stories. 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:45.839 March nineteen eighty three, Salvator Avellino's Jaguar, New York City. 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.680 Lu Casey Mobster's Salvator Avellino and Tony Dux Carala are 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:53.440 inside Avellino's car discussing the new book written by former 0:00:53.560 --> 0:01:04.400 boss Joe Banana. Both men are incensed Banano has openly 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.840 revealed the inner workings of his former crime family and 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:10.880 in turn, the mob as a whole. They think he's 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:17.760 fishing for a movie deal and some fast cash. I 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:24.959 know that, But then they talk about something that troubles 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:28.520 them even more. The book admits to the existence of 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:32.200 the Commission, that there is a governing body overseeing all 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:45.240 the families. No Mafia member has ever said this before publicly, Obedien. 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.720 The two men also talk about another crime boss who's 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:55.240 becoming a problem. They hint at their possible response, something drastic, something. 0:01:54.960 --> 0:02:00.920 Violent than some example other people like they talk a lot. 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:02.360 That's why going to fall. 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:09.600 What Avelino and Corlu didn't know was that their conversations 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.760 were being recorded a hidden microphone had been secretly planted 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.560 by law enforcement. The audio clips you just heard, though 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:34.679 at times hard to decipher, capture their every word. You're 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:36.800 not with the mob because you want to be. 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:39.919 It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated on. 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.880 If you like your life, you will vote to acquit. 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.880 I'm Anisee and Nicolazzi, my father should have been a 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:53.280 dead man from Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is 0:02:53.400 --> 0:03:04.080 Law and Order Criminal justice system. By the late seventies 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:07.200 and early eighties, the FBI was deploying an array of 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.760 resources to gain the upper hand against the mob. They 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:15.560 created specialized task forces, targeted mafia leadership, and even bugged 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.880 the homes of mob members, but it continued to be 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:23.040 an uphill battle. The mafia's coat of silence protected the 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.400 bosses who sat at the top calling the shots, and 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:29.000 the heads of the families were more than willing to 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.640 sacrifice a few pawns so long as their business kept booming. 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:38.080 The Commission's priority keep the peace, keep the throne. But 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.400 little did they know there was a new strategy brewing 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.240 within law enforcement, and it had less to do with 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:46.840 how to catch criminals and more to do with how 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:50.080 to prosecute them. And by the dawn of the new decade, 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.440 the tides were beginning to turn. As the FBI was 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.160 secretly blitzing the families with bugs and wire caps. The 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:00.760 State of New York was assembling it its own task 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.760 force and it was led by a former prosecutor with 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:05.440 a fresh plan to dismantle the. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:11.559 Mom formerly Ronald Goldstock, but Ron Goldstock for our purposes 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:15.000 and I was the director of the New York State 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:19.560 Organized Crime Task Force. Our jurisdiction was the investigation of 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:21.680 multi county organized crime. 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:25.839 Bad news for Kosa Nostra. They were about to be 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:32.200 flanked from all sides FBI, NYPD and now New York State. 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:38.000 We also had a fabulous tech unit to install taps 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.600 and bugs, and it was a unit that was, as 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.240 far as I know, better than anything else in the state. 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:47.960 Even with less than one hundred employees on the payroll, 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.560 Ron's team did have a notable advantage over the FBI. 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.880 We were very nimble. If you went to the Organized 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.400 Crime Task Force as a whole, so we need a 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.039 wire tap, we would do it in a day. As 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.520 a result, we became very popular. We were competitioned. To 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:07.440 the FBI, the. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:11.080 Rules of economics applied. When more than one service is 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:14.479 available in a given market, the quality of that service 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:15.479 tends to improve. 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:21.479 It is the competition that breeds innovation, that breeds change, 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:26.040 that breeds experimentation. The assistant director of the FBI said, 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:28.880 you are like a vanguard. You can move quickly where 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:31.919 like a battleship. It takes us forever to turn the 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.839 ship around, but once we get where we're going, we 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.520 can knock out anybody in sight. And I think that 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:41.160 was a pretty accurate description of both US and the Bureau. 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:44.320 And he had his work cut out for him. As 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.440 Ron put it, law enforcement hadn't been able to accomplish 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:48.440 much against the mob. 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.440 Organized crime was in its heyday. There were very few 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:58.360 prosecutions that led to significant convictions of groups of individuals. 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.400 At the time, you still had a mob that could 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:07.000 replace people who had been taken out by prosecutions or 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:07.599 through death. 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.400 But what was now being captured on recordings started to 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.760 change it all. You could sense that momentum was starting 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:18.560 to shift in law enforcement's favor. 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:24.719 The FBI began to use electronic surveillance to investigate the MOB, 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.440 and they began to learn through the taps and bugs 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.560 they had put in a great deal about the mob's structure. 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.680 That deeper understanding of mob hierarchy and the web of 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:40.479 loyalties and rivalries that ran through it would definitely come 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.360 in handy, especially when it came time to prosecute. It 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.800 was hard, dangerous work, but they were the best of 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:52.040 the best. Here again is former Special Agent Joe Cantamasa, 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:54.160 the FBI's undercover phone man. 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:59.680 You had to be capable, confident, and dedicated to the mission. 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:02.960 We had ninety nine percent success rate. 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.120 However, being one of the most in demand black bag 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.360 men came with a major pitfall, the toll on his 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:12.000 personal life. 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:16.000 There was just non stop work at the busy time. 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.640 We could do three entries in one night. For the 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:26.000 two years eighty two eighty three, I worked literally one 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.840 hundred hours a week, so I was generally not around. 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.680 I was divorced and my mother spent most of the 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.840 time taking care of my daughter. When I was just 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:37.480 not there. 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:40.960 On top of all that was a frustration. He couldn't 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.320 escape that for every low level soldier you put away, 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.920 there was another to take his place. But here's the thing. 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.880 As Ages placed the bugs and listened to hours upon 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.560 hours of recordings, they had no idea the gold mine 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:59.320 they had uncovered. These tapes, instead of being scattered across 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.160 various case like before, were about to be woven together 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.040 to form the backbone of the Commission case, a landmark 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:12.360 moment in their investigation. Back in the late sixties, G 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.640 Robert Blakey was a law professor at Notre Dame. He 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.440 had been warning the government for years about the need 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:22.080 to pivot how they went after organized crime. Here's Ron 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.560 Goldstock on the man once described as the government's canary 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:27.280 in a coal mine. 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.600 Blakey had served in the organized crime section of the 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.560 Department of Justice under Robert Kennedy, and he understood what 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:40.240 was needed to deal with the problem of syndicated crime 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.679 as opposed to individual crime or small conspiracies. 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:48.080 And with this new understanding, Blakey got to work. He 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:52.280 authored many of the electronic surveillance procedures, or title threes 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.000 as they're called, that law enforcement used to this day. 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:58.800 But Blakey's lasting legacy was his role in creating what 0:08:58.960 --> 0:08:59.920 is known as RICA. 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.640 In nineteen seventy he did the Organized Crime Control Act, 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:09.520 which provided for RICO, the Racketeer, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:14.240 RICO not only allowed you to use the term organized crime, 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:18.920 but in effect required you to. The individual who was 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:23.160 charged had to be part, either employed by, or associated with, 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:28.280 an enterprise, and an enterprise in many organized crime cases 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:32.959 was either the family or a crew from that family. 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:37.040 RICO was passed and signed into law by then President 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:40.640 Richard Nixon. All Blakie had to do next was convinced 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:42.360 the justice system to adopt it. 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:46.520 I met blake for the first time, probably around nineteen 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:50.520 seventy three, and we became friends, and at some point 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:53.120 he called me he had just gotten a grant to 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:57.959 create an institute on organized Crime at Cornell to train 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:01.960 state and local prosecutors on how to investigate and prosecute 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.959 organized crime. And so I left the DA's office, went 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.080 to Cornell, and the two of us put together this program. 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:13.000 What we did think was it made sense to bring 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.480 federal investigators to the summer sessions that we put on 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.000 for a week at Cornell. It was a chance to 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:23.440 keep them in on RICO. Jim Costler from the FBI 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:28.319 came up. Blakey gave that seminal speech that everybody remembers 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.920 on RICO not only as a prosecutive tool, but an 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:37.480 investigative tool. That is, you think not of investigating individuals 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:39.920 for the commission of an act, but you think more 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.760 broadly of the enterprise. You think of the pattern of 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:49.160 criminal activity rather than individual acts. And the other part 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:53.480 is that the RICO Statute allows for civil and criminal forfeiture. 0:10:56.080 --> 0:11:01.080 Blaky harp on three important methods of investigation. One, don't 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:05.280 waste time on the level gangsters, instead focus on leadership. 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.280 Two attack them where it hurt the most, go after 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:14.720 the money. And three more bugs, more wiretaps. It remained 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:19.440 the single best way around the Mafiast code of silence, and. 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.920 Blakie remains to this day the smartest person that I know. 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:28.439 He just saw a different approach was needed and fundamentally 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:33.360 changed the way the criminal justice system dealt with syndicated crime. 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:39.920 And incidentally, it took good investigators like Costler to appreciate 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.920 the brilliance of the statute and what it could do. 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:47.920 After attending the conference and learning about the groundbreaking Rico Statute, 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.160 Jim Costler headed back to New York to get his 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.880 house in order and make Robert Blake's dream come true. 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:57.840 The day we were leaving, he came up to the 0:11:57.920 --> 0:11:59.760 car or I was sitting in the car and he says, 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:02.160 you know, he said, I dream of the day that 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.080 you guys put all the busses of the families in 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.720 jail in one place. And I said, good luck with that. 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:11.880 But it actually happened. 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:24.720 After decades of chasing thugs, setting up stings, and rounding 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:27.960 up low level soldiers, it took a law professor to 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.480 finally discover the answer. And could you have done it 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:33.400 without the Rico Statute. 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.000 No way. The Rico Statute brought in all the crimes 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.080 that we didn't have jurisdiction over. It gave us all 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:44.200 kinds of ability to use the wiretaps and microphones that 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:45.360 we didn't have before. 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:50.560 In nineteen eighty, as the new Organized Crime supervisor of 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:55.760 New York, Jim quickly pinpointed the bureau's fundamental problem. Agents 0:12:55.760 --> 0:13:00.520 were working independently investigating single acts and single people, but 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:02.760 they weren't connecting the parts to the whole. 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.319 We were putting people in jail. We weren't solving the problem. 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:11.440 So basically, when I became a supervisor, I threw out 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:15.120 the code or the rule book on how agents that 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:18.640 I worked for me worked together. They worked as a team, 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:23.160 sometimes five or six working on a particular project, sometimes 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:26.920 ten guys working on a particular project, with one agent 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:30.319 in the lead and me watching over everybody. 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:34.880 It was pure poetry. Jim would run his teams like 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.439 a mafia captain ran his crew of soldiers. 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.200 The problem in New York was that we had three 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:45.720 different groups of agents working organized crime in three locations, 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:50.040 and sometimes they would all be investigating the same people. 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.560 It made no sense. So I basically said, this is 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.680 what's going to be. These people up here. They'll have 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.240 the Genoviees family, the people over here, the Lukes people 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:02.480 over here, that cam Be and and so forth. So 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.000 anything that came in for those particular families would go 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:09.240 to that squad, and that way you would streamline the 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:10.199 flow of information. 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:14.520 Now he had separate squads to mirror the various families, 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:18.360 and as the investigations progressed, he soon realized that each 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:22.000 of his squads held important pieces to this interconnected puzzle. 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:26.440 Sharing of the information was so important to our success. 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.400 Sometimes I would get information to come to me from 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.600 the Luksey squad and I had already seen something that 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.640 came similar to that from the Genevies squad, and I'd say, hey, listen, 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:39.600 you guys got to get together and share this information 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.240 because both of you have it, but you don't know it. 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:46.000 And I would have meetings every Thursday. Every Thursday morning, 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.080 I had all the supervisors come in and bring their 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:52.240 agents so that we all knew what each others was doing. 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:54.800 And from that point on we were off and running. 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:59.920 It was time to go full tilt with the bug. 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.160 They knew just where to start. The Palma Boys Social 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.840 Club was the East Harlem headquarters of Genevi's boss, Fat 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:12.880 Tony Sealerno with his black bag expertise. Special agent Joe 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.880 Cantamasa was once again the FBI's man on the inside. 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:20.000 But infiltrating the club would be no easy task. 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:25.640 It had two padlocks on it and the steel gate 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:28.920 you couldn't move in an inch without screeching, and it 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:30.880 was very loud and very noisy. 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.040 But being a native New Yorker, Joe had some pretty 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:36.920 good ideas how to avoid detection. 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.360 The night we were going to do the entry, it 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.680 was raining. We had already lined up the noisiest garbage 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:49.760 truck in the New York Department of Sanitation's fleet, so 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.240 we were ready to have noise cover. Everything is good 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:57.080 to go. One of the issues with lots of places 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.480 in Manhattan were street lights. Now I can remember sitting 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.320 a couple of doors down waiting for the agent's name 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.360 was Jim Curry to go over to the pedestal and 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:09.720 turn off the street light. 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.920 A pedestal is a metal box that houses breaker switches 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:15.360 and controls for the street lights. 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:20.000 I'm sitting there for an hour or more and all 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:22.840 I'm watching on the street in front of the place 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:27.400 is the rat show. Well, Jim shows up. He gets 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:30.080 to the pedestal. It doesn't even have a door on 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.320 it like it's supposed to, but there's rats all over 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.160 the place, and he decides he's not reaching in there 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:38.960 to do anything. He pulls the wires out with his 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.000 flyers and just cuts something. And the next thing I 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:45.400 see is sparks flying out of the pedestal. I'm thinking, 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:49.560 oh jeez, but the light goes out. Next thing happens, 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.840 we're ready to go. We quietly operate the locks. We're 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:56.920 ready to do the roll up now, so we call 0:16:57.040 --> 0:17:01.000 for the garbage truck. It's white like New York City 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.920 Sanitation was at the time, pulls down to the corner, 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:10.160 starts operating the diesel at high rev starts operating the hydraulics. 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:14.040 If we were standing six inches apart, you couldn't hear 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.080 me speak. That's how noisy it was. 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:21.200 And then the beauty of teamwork. Joe surveillance team had 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:24.720 previously let them know that every time the last guy 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.080 came out to close the gate for the night, he 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:28.639 first looked down to the ground. 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:32.720 The roll ups up, we call a time out. We 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.000 looked down the bottom of the door to find out 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:37.320 is there a lock down there that we couldn't see. 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:41.800 And there's a piece of thread across the bottom of 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:46.840 the door between the door and the door jam. 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:49.240 A nearly undetectable piece of security that would have foiled 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:51.119 the operation had it gone unnoticed. 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:54.800 If you didn't put that thread back when you were done, 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:57.680 you were in big trouble, which meant somebody had been 0:17:57.680 --> 0:17:59.720 in there other than you who locked it up the 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:03.400 night before, so we see that, we know what it is. 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.199 We save it. We get inside and there's a school 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:10.960 of thread on the counter, so at least we didn't 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.000 have to relock the old thread to put it back. 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:14.680 When we left. 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:20.120 Inside the club, they got to work installing a microphone 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:23.120 and running the connection to a terminal in the club's basement. 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.479 There's rats all over the place, but fortunately they are 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:29.760 happy to leave when you shine lights on them and 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:33.840 make noise. That microphone worked well. 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:36.840 But not every operation went so smoothly. 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:45.560 Probably the most difficult installation of my daytime scenarios happened 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:47.440 to be the Castellano installation. 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:52.600 As in Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family. He 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.639 was suspected of ordering a multitude of hits from his 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.520 lavish mansion on Staten Island. It wasn't a stretch of 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:01.960 the imagine nation to think he may have been one 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:06.200 of the bosses involved in Carmen Galanti's murder. But overall, 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:09.080 there was more than enough cause to get a listening 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:10.000 device inside. 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:15.119 Now we had a monitoring plant set up on a 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.639 different block near the house. 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:22.680 They learned that the notoriously careful and reclusive boss never 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:25.679 talked business over the phone, so Joe would have to 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:30.040 plant a bug inside the house. Their first attempt involved 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:32.640 trying to get Castellanos made Gloria to. 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:36.480 Help with the entry, and they decided early on to 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:43.120 approach Gloria's family in Bogatah and offer them twenty thousand 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:47.000 dollars if they could get Gloria to leave the door 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:50.680 open when they went food shopping, and lo and behold, 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:55.520 the next day they hear, quote, the FBI is trying 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:58.879 to get into your house. Unquote. We were not going 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.200 to get Gloria help, and she must have told Paul, 0:20:03.359 --> 0:20:06.280 and it came back to me that that wasn't going 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.280 to work. And that's when I said, Okay, you know, 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:11.040 I'll figure something else out. 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:17.280 Plan B posing as a cable repairman to install a 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:22.959 hidden microphone while Castellano's bodyguard shadowed his every move and 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:25.919 that house was never empty, so Joe would need to 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:29.399 install the microphone during the day while the Gambino boss 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.560 and his associates were there, so he created a reason 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:34.119 for a repairman to be called. 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:38.719 Cable boxes were very new back then. That's the scenario 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.400 that I used. I created a problem for them. That 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:48.240 was coordinated and introduced by another agent on another pole 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:49.399 down the block. 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.400 Joe's agent scrambled the cable signal from the telephone pole 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:58.720 and when they called for a repairman, they intercepted it, so. 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:00.639 He was there when I got there, and then he's 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:04.399 out of sight. And then Tommy Belotti and another older 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:08.199 gentleman who I did not know, they're watching me and 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.480 they're walking me through the house to see if I 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:13.080 can identify the problem. 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:15.359 Do you feel that suspicion? 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:16.040 Oh? 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:17.360 Absolutely, watching me. 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:22.200 With Bollotti and another mobster keeping eyes on him. Joe 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.520 identified the cable box, and with his agent's help from 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.879 a block away, they replicated the problem that had gotten 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:30.639 him into the house initially. 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:34.520 And on my keywords, he would create the problem that 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:38.680 they were having, and we got to associate the problem 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:42.880 that they thought they had with the particular area of 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:45.720 the house that I wanted to put the mic in. 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.000 Connecting the microphone was going to be much harder than 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:51.040 Joe initially thought. 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.200 The reason that it was so difficult is in order 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.320 to get this connection done, the wire that I needed 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:02.920 to get connected to to replace the device that had 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:07.600 the microphone in it was actually custom installed into a 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.159 kitchen countertop and cabinet. 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:14.680 Once again, time for Joe to use his magic get 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:16.960 the targets to help seal their own fate. 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:23.159 And so we had this adversarial exchange. I maintained my 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:28.040 bad New York attitude to fit the occasion, and I said, listen, 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:29.840 if we're going to do this, you've got to help 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:31.000 me take this thing apart. 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:34.159 And they did, and. 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:39.119 We literally disassembled part of a kitchen counter cabinet in 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:42.679 order to get access to the connector for me to 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:48.680 replace this equipment. And part of my scenario for how 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.120 I do this is I teach them along the way. 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.640 I explain what I'm doing. I'm not doing this in silence. 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:56.960 I'm helping them understand the approach. 0:22:57.480 --> 0:22:59.720 And you're actually planting a microphone at the same. 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:02.960 Time, exactly Well, if you had the microphone in your hand, 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:04.880 you wouldn't know you had a microphone in your hand. 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:08.320 So we had pretty good concealment options back then. 0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:13.240 Needless to say, these were high risk, high reward situations, 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:15.840 but you never know what might be the key to 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:19.040 breaking a case. So they came up with more creative 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:23.560 ways to gather intel, including one place mobsters least expected 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:29.280 to be bugged their cars and over at the New 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:33.000 York Organized Crime Task Force, Ron Goldstock was about to 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:36.680 strike gold in the form of a glistening black nineteen 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:40.119 eighty two Jaguar. It was owned by a captain in 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:44.359 the Lucazy crime family, sal Avelino. Avelina was also the 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:49.719 chauffeur to Lucasey boss Tony dux Carllo. Gold Stock suspected 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:53.520 that sneaking a bug into the Jaguar would deliver priceless intel, 0:23:54.240 --> 0:23:55.359 but it wouldn't be easy. 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:59.960 Our tech team, which as I said, was just exceptionally good, 0:24:00.400 --> 0:24:04.639 got a similar Jaguar and then practiced. They had to 0:24:04.640 --> 0:24:08.080 first figure out how to attach the bug to the 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:11.640 battery without draining the battery. Then they had to locate 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:13.760 where the bug was going to be so that there 0:24:13.840 --> 0:24:16.960 was an ambient noise that would interfere with the clarity 0:24:17.000 --> 0:24:19.800 of their recordings. And once they did that, they had 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:22.960 to be able to do it very quickly, because they 0:24:23.240 --> 0:24:26.080 wanted to do it in the shortest time possible. Once 0:24:26.119 --> 0:24:28.199 they knew it, they took the car apart, put it 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:31.880 back together again, and then began with a stopwatch. They 0:24:31.920 --> 0:24:34.200 still had to pull off the whole front part of 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:37.760 the inside the dish and install it and prop it 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:41.399 put it back together again. At the end they knew 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:43.159 that it was the fastest they could do it. 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:47.080 Then the team just had to watch and wait for 0:24:47.200 --> 0:24:49.800 the perfect moment to make their move. 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:04.920 It was installed when Avelino was going to a location 0:25:05.440 --> 0:25:06.199 in Huntington. 0:25:06.720 --> 0:25:08.919 I believe it was the Huntington Townhouse because when I 0:25:08.920 --> 0:25:10.560 saw that reading, I was like, I think I had 0:25:10.560 --> 0:25:11.719 my senior prompt. 0:25:11.760 --> 0:25:14.680 Well, not sure. It may have been your senior problem. 0:25:14.720 --> 0:25:17.600 And he was invited, but in any events, he parked 0:25:17.600 --> 0:25:20.720 his car in the lot, and fortunately for us, he 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:23.359 had gotten there late, so there was only parking away 0:25:23.400 --> 0:25:27.280