Agent Joe Pistone---why the hate?

Been a long time since I read D. Brasco, but I don't remember anything out of the ordinary in it (as far as Feds and operation go), but I've noticed some people really don't like him on here.

I remember thinking his 2nd book sucked hard. But what specifically is it that evokes the dislike on here that sets him apart form other agents??

thanks

I don't think people hate him. He just gets made fun of for that whole 'there's a 500k bounty on me so I gotta creep around in my awesome shades' nonsense.
Plus I personally don't think he could have went so deep in a family like that for so long without crossing lines he says he didn't cross. But that's just a hunch.

I think you are absolutely right, he would never admit crossing lines though. but, to get next to a captain [sonny black] he had to have gained his confidence some shady way.

and I have always said that he picked the right family to infiltrate, he could never have gone that deep in any other family except the bonannos.

he Is a effective FBI agent, but not very truthful as a man.

I don't hate Pistone, but his never ending support for Lin DeVecchio.. its nauseating.

yeah, that's so typical FBI, "we are all perfect." they can never admit that some agents are as bad as their snitches.

...here's what Pistone once had to say about Whitey Bulger's old benefactor..



“The reign of the Patriarca Family is ended. A substantial amount of the credit for the demise of that mob family must be given to one man, Special Agent John Connolly.”

lol... I wonder what he has to say now...

Yea his love for both Connolly and DeVecchio makes my stomach turn. And like mentioned above, he acts like the mob is still looking for him and he has to hide out everywhere. None of those mobsters give two shits about Joe Pistone at this point.

I admire Pistone, but I am as sure as a person can be without proof that he did cross that line to ingratiate himself with the Bonannos.

I have many reasons to hold that view, including the fact that the movie Donnie Brasco depicted him as present at the 3 capos hit and taking part in the disposal. Pistone said most of the movie was pretty much accurate.

Which parts were poetic license? You decide.

Exactly I was just about to post the same thing! He dedicates a large chunk of his book to how "innocent" Lin was. If I wanted to read garbage I wouldn't have paid money to do so

Truth is, I'm sure being a former FBI agent he knows there isn't no open contract out on him... But, if he were to turn up to a mob documentary & proclaim how safe he is/ how dead the mob is, interview would frankly be over & everyone can go home

He's just milking the system... Creating fear & suspense. He created a bunch of characters in his book using the same tactics, whom some of u are still discussing 30yrs on

I'd say he's done a pretty good job in that regard & the money is drying up so he has to put on them shades & hire bodyguards for a shoot... Always watching his back. Truth is he's more likely to get jumped by a street junkie than mob hitman & he knows it

This guy was no different than those he put away:

Monday, January 29, 2007
Joe Pistone Confesses to Crimes as Mob Mole

Legendary FBI agent Joe Pistone is confessing for the first time that he broke the law during the years he spent undercover as mob wanna-be Donnie Brasco.

Warehouse burglaries. Beatings. Truck hijackings. And even a conspiracy to murder a Bonanno crime family capo.

In his new memoir, Pistone details the crimes he committed to prove his loyalty to the gang he eventually took down. "Sometimes you have to do stuff you don't normally do, you wouldn't do," Pistone told the Daily News, which got an exclusive peek at "Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business."

For instance, there was the phone call that came in 1981 when Pistone and his mob buddies were playing cards in Brooklyn's Motion Lounge.

It was a tip that Bonanno big Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato, who took part in the infamous 1979 rubout of Gambino boss Carmine Galante, was camped out on Staten Island.

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."

During his six years infiltrating Sonny Black's vicious crew, Pistone dug up enough evidence to put away nearly 200 mobsters, all while making life-or-death decisions on how far to take his role-playing.

Now 65, the New Jersey native lives with his wife in an unidentified location, but will come out of hiding for a book tour in the coming weeks.

Over the years, Pistone - portrayed by Johnny Depp in the 1997 movie "Donnie Brasco" - has been cagey when discussing how he gained the trust of an insular gang of suspicious men because revealing more could have damaged prosecutions. But his most revealing book to date details the incredible lengths he went to.

Take the beating he delivered on two druggies dumb enough to stick up Pistone and his mob pal Benjamin (Lefty Guns) Ruggiero in the stairwell of a Little Italy walkup. "You just saw two dead punks run down the stairs," Ruggiero told him.

At Ruggiero's urging, Pistone caught up with them a few days later near Little Italy and meted out the punishment. "He hit the pavement as if I'd had a roll of dimes in my right fist," Pistone writes.

"I looked down at the kid on the ground and realized he was out cold and so I sprung suddenly and hauled off an overhand right on the other one and he went down ... "From the kidney blows they bled piss for weeks. And until the breaks healed they had no use of their fingers for such things as shooting a gun."

It was savage, but Pistone says the beating saved their lives. "Otherwise they would have got killed," Pistone said. "Either I go take care of it or they [the mob] will. You don't stick up a wiseguy and live to tell about it." He's quick to point out that the assaults he carried out always involved thieves or other wiseguys. "No citizens got hurt," he said.

Pistone also admits getting cuts of between $2,500 and $5,000 from warehouse burglaries he took part in but says he turned over the money to the FBI.

He doesn't offer details on the hijackings he carried out. But he admits that "my participation in Mafia hijacking has always been an open sore for me, something that I have hesitated to talk about."

Even after 30 years, Pistone is still angry that the FBI didn't let him stay undercover longer so that he could become a made man. "Imagine if I had been made," Pistone writes. "It would have been the biggest humiliation the Mafia had ever suffered. And it was the one chance the FBI would ever have to pull it off.

"Imagine the embarrassment for the Mafia from coast to coast and all the way to Sicily when the news got out that the exalted Bonanno crime family had made an agent."

Thanks to Thomas Zambito
http://www.thechicagosyndicate.com/2007/01/joe-pistone-confesses-to-crimes-as-mob.html

Pistone also gave a positive comment to a book which tries to rehabilitate Paul Rico - another scumbag with a badge, the one who covered up for Joe Barboza and Vincent Flemmi and blamed their crimes on Tameleo, Limone, Greco and Salvati. I don't give a [censored] about Tameleo who was a multiple murderer anyway, but Limone and Greco were just thugs, not hitmen, and Salvati wasn't even a underworld character, he only "guilt" was being late to return loaned money to Barboza.

To be honest, I was immensely disappointed when I first read those things. I thought Pistone was one of the most important antimafia men in American history, and his defending corrupt agents is like as if Giovanni Falcone in Italy started defending convicted corrupt judges just because they were his former colleagues.

Surely he was authorized by the FBI to commit crimes (with the exception of murder obviously) How else did they expect him to make inroads into the family. The guys would have gotten pretty suspicion of him early on if wasn't willing to do certain things.

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?

Personally, i think pistone actually liked Lefty and i also think he liked the life style and hated the fact that it had to end.

Then there's the whole,"$500,000 bounty" bullshit. We all know the mob doesn't offer rewards for whacking guys. Its considered part of doin your job, and there is never a shortage of up-and-comers waiting for the chance to prove themselves. I file the "bounty" story in the same category as Bonanno's whole "I was kidnapped story".

By the way, if Pistone is such an ardent supporter of lowlife douchebags like DeVecchio and Connolly, does he support Eppolito and Carracapa as well?

It's called the blue line of silence, it's basically the law enforcement code of omerta.

I'm not sure if he supports the Mafia Cops, I doubt it since they're not feds and they were basically thrown to the wolves and condemned by everybody.

As for the bounty, I'm pretty sure if an up and comer had Pistone whacked he'd get it, by it, I mean a .38 at the back of the head.

He was involved with violence, no doubt about it..Nobody's buying that he gained the confidence of a capo because of his jewel heists..Devecchio probably knew of a lot of stuff Pistone did that was against the FBI's rules including beatings but never said anything..Now it was time for Pistone to return the favor !!

How long was he around those guys, 6 years ?? Never brought a woman around in 6 years ?? Yeah right..While his wife was home with the kids, this guy was out enjoying the life and bimbo's are a big part of it..They would have thought he was a fag otherwise...His wife has to know that !!

She's probably so naive that she believe him when he says he just paraded around with them and never slept with them.

You couldn't be more spot on. .

..

You're probably right...She probably wanted to believe him...

I saw them both on a show one time on the discovery channel...she was no street girl..A regular respectable looking lady, but too trusting !!

I think that was the reason for the 3rd book, Unfinished Business. He dishes more dirt on himself than he did in Donnnie Brasco, which had come out years earlier. I figured enough time had passed and no cases would be jeopardized. Make no mistake about it, you don't get into the good graces of guys Like Anthony Mirra or Lefty without being a head-breaker.

Unfinished Business was pretty disappointing. I found a copy online and downloaded it and read the first half until I got bored and put it down. He tried to fill it with stuff we already know, like the life of Casso and the Mafia cops. I expected more coverage of Massino flipping, etc and a lot more shit about the Bonannos but honestly in that book the Bonannos were the ones he was focused the least on.

I dug some of the stories in it. Like of he and Lefty getting robbed and Pistone dishing out the beating to the robbers afterwards.

Here's my question:

If Donnie Brasco aka Joe Pistone, would have lost the sitdown over the Lefty Guns vs Tony Mirra beef, would we have even heard of him?

Here is something I find baffling about Joe Pistone that isn't related to the author of the post and for that, I apologize but, it does involve Joe Pistone.

What baffles me about Pistone is, HOW is it that Joe Pistone NEVER met or engaged with Joe Massino in his 5-6 years being so close to Sonny Black?......I do understand that bosses are very careful and only meet with close trusted high ranking members but, in Pistone's years of undercover, Massino was just a soldier..... I am almost positive that his capo at the time was Phil Lucky.

Just kind of odd how Pistone was chums with Black but never engaged with Massino in all that time.
Can anyone elaborate?

Also, does anyone know when Massino became a capo OR, did Massino move from soldier to boss in 1991?

He did meet Massino, just they were never close. Massino used to brag he was always wary of Donnie, but I don't think he ever had a sixth sense about this or anything, it was just the rivalry between crews... he had his own crew and Sonny Black and him soon drifted apart and became rivals for the top spot of street/acting boss.
Massino was already a powerful capo by the end of the Donnie Brasco operation.

Pistone describes in his book Unfinished Business the meeting with Massino. They just shook hands and introduced, that's it. He was relieved because in an earlier case apparently he'd been one of the agents who had arrested Massino.

I'd say an undercover federal agent getting whacked would have been newsworthy. That is, if the feds didn't pull him out first. I believe the Mirra sitdowns were towards the end of the investigation anyhow, so the arrests would have been the same.

You're assuming he would have gotten killed?

Please elaborate.

the bonannos were the littlest family, and I don't believe they were as strong as any other family.

when piston went under. Im assuming the FBI had a very good reason for infiltrating that family. I can't see him getting very far in the Gambino's, or any of the other families that had an acting boss, wasn't rastelli in prison when pistone first went undercover?

wasn't there a lot of confusion in that family at that time?

Good point about Rastelli. Often a boss is someone concerned about being implicated by association. With Rastelli in prison, there were less checks and balances over the people who recklessly let Pistone in.

Yes.

[quote=Alfa Romeo] Good point about Rastelli. Often a boss is someone concerned about being implicated by association. With Rastelli in prison, there were less checks and balances over the people who recklessly let Pistone in. [/quote/]

yes, alfa, I think the FBI would pick the family that they thought would be the easiest to penetrate, there may be a lot we don't know about the bonanno's that the FBI knew that anyone else didn't.

and im quite positive that rastelli in prison, influenced their decision to put pistone in that family. I seriously don't think he would have gone as far as he did with any other family.

I'm not quite sure about that Binnie. In Pistone's book, he starts out by trying to penetrate the Colombo's. I don't think that he was even "aiming" for them so much as that's who he had his first contact with so to speak...just my two cents.

This is correct. While Pistone hooking up with Bonannos was fortuitous, after he makes his initial connections on the UES, he's out in Bensonhurst with Jilly Greca first; had things gone differently, he might well have gone further with Jilly's crew-- and might well have ended up like Jilly too.

Can't front on Pistone's ability to hang with a psychopath like Anthony Mirra but, as his prison record shows, Mirra wasn't the world's most careful gangster either.

Now here's a question: how many people in the FBI knew about both "Donnie Brasco" and their informant Gregory Scarpa? Had Pistone stayed longer with the Columbos, was there enough intelligence and communication to get him the fuck out before something happened?

Rastelli was in prison, the acting boss on the street was Salvatore Farruggia. Why do you think was he never indicted if Pistone worked so hard on the Bonanno family?

good point, he made of played by ear , so to speak.

conopizza....I could be very wrong here, but, I don't think pistone knew about scarpa when he was under, but, if he was undercover in the columbo family with scarpa, and he knew about scarpa.

would he let scarpa get away with murder?

dwalin2011..... my guess he could never reach him. why do you think, seems an interesting question.

Pistone got evidence against Rastelli, they even severed him from the Commission trial so Pistone could testify. Theoretically Farruggia was Rastelli's eyes and hands out of prison, the link between him and the rest of the organization. So it's strange they could indict the imprisoned boss and low-level soldiers and made their case without indicting the middle-man as well.

Based on what we know I think that's right: Pistone wouldn't have known about Scarpa and I'm pretty sure he doesn't mention him in any of the books. Whereas Pistone does have that one glancing encounter with Carmine Persico, he's in car with Jilly (I think, might have been someone else) and that person was meeting Carmine on 3rd Avenue & Carroll St in Brooklyn (Gowanus neighborhood, edge of Persico stomping grounds, then very Italian and even with one Italian social club and one long 'associated' restaurant remaining today).

And of course it was safer for Pistone NOT to know & vice-versa, I just wonder how much oversight there was and, if he'd stayed, if he could have accidentally gotten caught up in the Columbo's homicidal madness.

Yea I don't think Pistone knew about Scarpa and no way Scarpa knew about him. I think at one point the Feds even had a file on Brasco because they thought he was a true player. They couldn't risk letting anyone in the FBI knowing he was undercover because if his name leaked he would have been dead for sure. I forget where, it might have been with Jimmy the Weasel and someone in Cleveland having a leak with FBI files to the gangsters that almost got him killed. The same could have happened with Pistone if it was well known with the Feds that someone was in with the Colombo's or Bonanno's.

Also I don't find it odd he wasn't around Massino much. I can't remember once again where I read this, but someone was complaining about they didn't know who the boss or their capo was and couldn't point them out if they were standing in front of them. Now that is some insulation. So if that was true at all then I don't find it surprising Donnie never was around Massino much.

Dwalin thats a good question wonder why Farrugia was basically unscathed by Pistones investigation?

Was wondering did Farrugia have any role in Galantes killing? Wasnt he the street boss for Rusty at the same time Galante was making his power play? I may have my timeline fucked up and he was named street boss after Lilo was wacked , can anyone shed some light on this?

Who was Jilly Grecos capo at that time? In hindsight id like to think Pistone wouldnt have been able to infiltrate the stronger more stAble fams at that time like the Genovese or Gambinos...but ya never know look at Falcone's infiltrating the Gambinos in 2002 he was just basically around for less than a yr and according to him he was DePAlmas go too associate..idk how accurate that is but just finished his book, im sure a more knowledgeable poster can set the record straight

The Colombos were the smallest family, followed by the Luccheses. Pistone did not have the option to choose a family. His mission simply was to infiltrate any of the Five Families, not a particular one. He first hang out with Colombo guys before affiliating himself with Mirra and Ruggiero, which was purely coincidental.

That could have saved his life too. When was it the Colombo's had their many wars? I know much of nothing on them so bare with me.

Why not? He wasn't part of the Milwaukee operation that brought down Sabella and Marangello, and the later stuff (Florida, the capo murders) only led to indictments in the Motion Lounge crew.




Greca was under Charlie Moose.

Pistone as part of the Bergin crew would be an interesting what-if.

This is a joke, right? WTF is with these threads.