On the orders of his own capo, Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano, Pistone headed out to find Indelicato - with a .25-caliber automatic.
It turned out the caller had bum information, but the former lawman admits he would have pulled the trigger on Indelicato before jeopardizing his life or the operation. "If Bruno's there, he's gone," Pistone writes.
"If I have to put a bullet in his head, I will, and I'll deal with the federal government and the Staten Island DA later. ... There's no doubt they both would charge me for murder. The Bureau would brand me a rogue agent and hang me out."
I have no doubt he meant what he said there.
Anyone who doubts this should watch Joe Pistone's appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show. In that interview he said that if given a contract on a criminal, he would carry it out in the interest of self preservation, but he would not carry a contract out on an innocent civilian.
He did unequivocally deny committing any murder while acting as an undercover FBI agent however. But you wonder how far he went.
I am of the opinion that the reason the FBI chose to blow his cover right before he became a made man, a fully inducted member of the mafia, is because they might have known that he crossed the line and didn't want potential accusers being able to point to the fact that Pistone became made as proof that he did cross the line.
In the Arsenio interview, Pistone does contradict himself ever so slightly. At the beginning of the interview he says he was given "several" contracts to kill made men. Later on he says it was only two, and they didn't pan out.
How many times could he have been given a contract to go out looking for someone and always come up short and continue to be believable?
