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John Alite: The Mob And Gotti's Lawyer Gave Me The FBI 'Proffer Session' Memo

Gang Land Exclusive! The red hot question of who gave John Alite the super-secret FBI memo about John A. Gotti's hush-hush offer to cooperate with federal prosecutors back in 2005 got even hotter this week as the mob turncoat fingered Gotti's own lawyer as one of the alleged leakers.

In an exclusive interview with Gang Land, the ex-Gambino associate turned cooperating witness swore he obtained not one, but two copies of the "supposed-to-be-secret" FBI memo that was disclosed in the sensational new book, Gotti's Rules. Both copies, Alite insisted, came via attorneys representing Junior Gotti and other top Gambino family members.

In a lengthy interview, Alite said he first got the memo about Gotti's "proffer session" with the feds while he was stuck in a hellhole prison in Brazil in 2006, the same year the report of the session was put on paper.

Alite said he got the official FBI document "not long" before he was extradited to the U.S. on Christmas Eve of 2006, two years after he was arrested in Brazil on a racketeering indictment filed against him in Tampa. His receipt of the memo, he insisted, came months before he decided to become a cooperating witness — in March of 2007.

Alite said he is not sure which prison he was in at the time, but he insisted that the copies of the report, known as an "FBI 302," were sent to him by a well-known mob attorney on behalf of "the Administration of the Gambino family" after the lawyer alerted him during a telephone conversation that Junior Gotti was cooperating and that "they were getting the paperwork on it."

"Joseph Corozzo sent it, and Joseph Corozzo said it came from Charlie Carnesi," Alite said in a telephone interview. Alite agreed to speak to Gang Land after he read in last week's column that Carnesi asked Manhattan U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara to investigate how Alite got a copy of the FBI memo.

Alite said he might have gotten it when he was at Presidio Ary Franco in Rio de Janiero, where inmates were routinely tortured and lived in filthy, bug-infested cells, according to a special United Nations report in 2012. But he could also have been at Bangu, where he was transferred in late 2006 before he was extradited. "That's a blur," he said.

But while he admitted confusion about his whereabouts, Alite insisted he remembered clearly how the document reached him. His phone call to Corozzo took place in late summer or early fall of 2006. He said he called the lawyer to discuss the then-upcoming racketeering trial of Gambino capo Ronald (Ronnie One Arm) Trucchio in Tampa. Trucchio — not Junior Gotti — was identified in that indictment as Alite's mob superior in crimes from Queens to the Sunshine State. The trial began on October 15, 2006.

That discussion is described in Gotti's Rules by veteran reporter and Mafia expert George Anastasia. The story of the Corozzo phone call from the Brazilian prison appears in the same chapter as the text of the entire 302. But the book doesn't include the rest of the conversation that Alite said he had with the attorney, whose father, Joseph (JoJo) Corozzo, was the Gambino crime family consigliere at the time.

"I was actually arguing with Corozzo about how they were going to fight the case with Ronnie Trucchio," Alite recalled. "I even told him I would help him. He could blame some of the case on me. Not the whole thing but some of the stuff to do with Ronnie One Arm."

The conversation abruptly turned to the 2005 proffer session Gotti had with the feds that had been transcribed in January of 2006 when Alite suggested that Junior — who would later be charged with some of the same crimes as Trucchio — might be able to provide Corozzo some useful information about the case.

The lawyer immediately badmouthed that idea, said Alite, who recalled the back and forth discussion they had:

"Corozzo turned around and said, 'He's a rat, and we're going to get the work on it.' I said, 'Where we getting the work on it?' He said, 'His attorney.' 'Who's his attorney?' 'Charlie Carnesi.' 'Who got the paperwork?' '(Capo) Danny Marino brought it to the Administration,'" said Alite.

Charles Carnesi"And the Administration passed it to whatever guys that it could help their cases," Alite continued, naming himself, Marino and longtime family associate Joseph Watts as likely recipients of the 302. "I don't know how many copies of that shit was out there."

Corozzo acknowledges having one telephone discussion with Alite about the upcoming Trucchio trial, but doubts that he said anything about Gotti's status as a possible informer. But the lawyer insists that the first time he saw the 302 was "last week, in your column" and that he had nothing to do with Alite getting it.

Alite said the information he got from Corozzo startled him.

"You guys (reporters) were on a constant phone basis with them (mob lawyers)," he said. "I was out of the loop. I had no idea that Charlie Carnesi was around. I had no idea who John's lawyers were. I had no idea what anybody was doing. I was in prison in Brazil."

Alite's name does not appear in the memo, written by FBI agent Cindy Peil and dated January 18, 2006. But it does state that Junior Gotti implicated Marino in one mob rubout and Watts in two, including one in 1980 with the elder John Gotti.

Alite made no bones about his dislike of Gotti in the book in which the mob prince is dubbed a "cheap-shot artist with a penchant for stabbing or gunning down unsuspecting victims, then scrambling to blame someone else when the heat came." But he firmly rejected a Gang Land suggestion that his account was a back story created years later based on facts that he picked up over the years.

"When I first came in, I mentioned to the FBI that I know John is a rat," he said. "They didn't answer me. So I dropped it. I talked to my attorney and he told me to drop it and let it go because I was not going to help myself and my deal. He said, 'Shut the fuck up about it,' and I let it go."

Alite declined to name any of the attorneys he referred to because he had signed non-disclosure agreements that prevented him from going any further. In the interview, he expressed a concern that he may have already gone too far, saying in response to several questions, "I can't talk about that."

Alite conceded that he doesn't know for a fact that Corozzo sent the 302 to him, or that Corozzo in turn received it from Carnesi. But he valiantly defended his current government allies, insisting that he did not get the memo from any government official — as Carnesi implied in last week's Gang Land.

Daniel Marino"Did I see Charlie Carnesi give it to him? No," he said. "I was told that he gave it to Danny Marino and that he did the right thing, brought the papers to the Administration."

The proof, in Alite's mind, was in the delivery.

"I got two sets of copies of them," he said. "I got one set mailed to me through my attorney in Brazil, my extradition attorney, and I had one brought to me, handed to me while I was in prison in Brazil." (He had two, according to Gotti's Rules, which doesn't name them.)

Alite declined to identify the person who hand-delivered the 302 to him, implying that it was one of the attorneys whose dealings with him he had pledged not to reveal.

"I can't talk about who handed it to me," he said.

Asked if the U.S. attorney's office had contacted him about the FBI 302, Alite said no, stating that there really was no reason for them to call him.

"I said it back then that I got the info from Joe Corozzo," he said. "That's in my debriefings. I didn't say on the stand that I had the papers, but I said in my debriefings that I got the papers. I said it. I know I said it."

Joseph Watts"If they investigate, they'll see that I said when I was cooperating that Carnesi went to Florida to see Danny Marino (about Gotti's proffer) and that (is how) I got the papers. I gave that up years ago, it's not new news."

Gang Land does not have access to all of Alite's debriefings, but could find no mention of Alite stating that he had the FBI 302 about Gotti's proffer session, or that Carnesi helped him get it, in any of the ones that we have seen. Perhaps it fell through the cracks.

But since Alite was the key government witness in Junior's 2009 trial, prosecutors, in order to guard against a reversal of a conviction, surely would have asked Gotti to waive any future claim that Carnesi was working under a conflict of interest when he questioned Alite if they had seen anything about that topic in Alite's debriefings. They never did.

"I never gave the 302 to anybody," Carnesi said yesterday, stating that he never saw any Alite debriefing in which he said he had a copy of the 302. The lawyer added that he intended to press his request for a full-blown investigation into how Alite got the official FBI memo about the proffer session Gotti had with the feds on January 18, 2005.

Meanwhile, despite Alite's remarks, law enforcement sources say the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office "is concerned" about the unauthorized release of the FBI report and is investigating it. A spokesman declined to discuss the inquiry.