And really nobody knows him?
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1987-01-21/news/8701040980_1_howard-beach-blacks-queens-county"The North American record for restaurant sitting, five-man team, is held by the Ozone Park, N.Y., quintet of Sal Reale, Mike Doyle, Tony Sadowski, Pete Prezioso and John Santucci.
They sat at a round table in Altadonna`s Restaurant in 1984 from noon until 2 a.m. -- 14 hours. Counting the minutes and seconds beyond this is unnecessary, as this is so clearly a record.
Back in 1984, who could envision all that would happen? They had no way of knowing that their meeting someday would have a most telling effect on the nation`s major domestic problem -- race.
Because they were there, Doyle, a cop, lost his job. Prezioso, a police inspector, is in trouble. Santucci, a district attorney, looks awful. Sadowski, a Democratic district leader, wishes he had remained retired.
And Sal Reale, who paid the check, suddenly finds out what true notoriety means; Reale, who loves to walk on high wire between the legal and illegal side of life, one night a picture with a politician at a county dinner, the next, the FBI snapping him with John Gotti.
Reale was convicted in a Florida federal court of being a gangster, has a second federal trial coming up in Brooklyn and, suddenly, the New York police are saying that a detective agency he once had was involved in many murders.
Sal Reale said: ``They are making me out to be another Rambo.``"
----
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/len-levitt/the-timlin-mystery_b_635542.html"....THE AMAZING MR. REALE. Sal Reale of the Gambino crime family is best known for
organizing the 14-hour luncheon at the Altadonna restaurant in 1983 with two top city lawmen -
- Queens District Attorney John Santucci and the head of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division Pete
Prezioso.
That marathon sit-down ended up killing both their careers. Prezioso was forced to retire. Santucci subsequently resigned.
Well, it seems that Reale, who spent 31 years as the Gambinos’ man at the city airports, was also linked to other lawmen — in the CIA, if you can believe that. Carlo Gambino gave him the lucrative airport job, which after Gambino died, Reale managed to keep through the reigns of two more Gambino bosses. The first was Paul Castellano, the second John Gotti, who had big Paul whacked in 1986.
Now comes news that Reale figured prominently in a 1991 deposition of a discredited “independent contractor” for the CIA, one Richard Brenneke. This character claimed to have smuggled drugs into the U.S. for Reale and Gotti as part of an arms deal for the Nicaraguan resistance, known as the Contras. Brenneke claimed he was reporting to the national security analyst for then Vice President George H.W. Bush, implying that Bush The Elder knew about these illegal operation.
While Brenneke’s allegations regarding Bush proved false, nobody ever questioned his stories about Reale, who, sources said, worked at Kennedy through Local 295 of the Teamsters Union, and apparently with Gotti’s approval, made up phony union jobs for other CIA operatives supposedly smuggling in arms through Kennedy.
In 1990, after Reale pleaded guilty to extorting money from an air freight company at Kennedy in return for labor peace, federal Judge Jack Weinstein sentenced him to 15 years in prison. However, the judge suddenly suspended the sentence, cryptically stating that imprisoning Reale would “likely result in his death, either by his own hand or the hands of someone else. He knows too much.”
The judge then placed him on probation and banished him from New York for five years. Reale didn’t remain free long. That same year, federal agents in the Texas border town of Sierra Blanca stopped his car and seized $3.8 million in cash and an additional $96,000 in Swiss francs. Weinstein then threw the book at Reale, giving him ten years in prison for violating his parole.
Reale has since relocated to Las Vegas. Weinstein declined comment...."