Has to be Joe Pistone. From the $500,000 contract to the claims that he took down the entire Bonanno family, this guy is full of manure. How many guys actually went to prison as a direct result of his work? Maybe half a dozen low level mobsters? Pistone even takes credit for the Commission Case. He's still walking around with those stupid shades, as if someone is going to whack him over what he did 35 years ago.

I generally don't care for the documentaries to begin with. But I've always said that the so called open contract on Pistone was absolute bullshit. This ain't Sicily. The American mob would NEVER, EVER sanction such a thing. Because they know it would be tantamount to unleashing the Wrath of God on them. And the Commission was still sitting back then. No fucking way the other four bosses would allow it. NO .... Fucking .... WAY.

I remember watching a recent doco where Pistone was giving an interview whilst walking down a street somewhere in NYC and 'somebody' yells out "Fucking Rat!". And they had to 'hightail it outta there'

Talk about a set up. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

I don't mind Pistone but he needs to give the act a rest. And for chrissakes lose the shades.

How about Jack Garica/Falcone, was he really proposed membership? I just started reading his book and, as well in his interviews, he comes across as a bit of an idiot. As mentioned above, a lot of these undercover FBI guys love to talk about how well they did damaging LCN so I'm pretty dubious that he could have been made.

That was funny, he was standing in front of the Motion Lounge when that happened.

Unfortunately, that's true. Greg actually did propose that mutt.

I've said this before, but there should really be a statue of Greg DePalma at Quantico .

The guy had stones though.

Brains not so much, but stones aplenty.

Like fucking boccie balls.

In Depalmas defense, theres no way he couldve known that a guy that fat could be an fbi agent. I mean how the hell did garcia ever pass a physical...he might just be the most disgusting human being ive ever seen.

It's just too embarrassing, though. Garcia grew up in the East Bronx. He went to Mount Saint Michael, which is almost walking distance to Greg's old headquarters on Boston and Conner.

Mercifully, the poor bastard died in jail. Not that anything would have happened to him in this day and age. But he couldn't have handled being put on the shelf for good. Believe me, it would have eaten him alive.

I read that after the Donnie Brasco situation happened, some of the families made a rule saying that associates must been known for at least 8 years to be proposed for membership. Technically speaking, Garcia's been around them his whole life lol

What's worse than letting a Fed named Falcone into your crew in the Mafia?

Letting a CUBAN Fed named Falcone into your crew in the Italian Mafia.

Ouch.

Talk about a slap in the face to old Greg.

Ernest Volkman. I cringe when I hear the BS that comes out of his mouth.

He sucks. It's a shame, too. His first book with John Cummings, The Heist, which detailed Lufthansa, was well written and showed a lot of promise. But everything since has been garbage. Their books about Gotti (Goombata), and the Luccheses (Gangbusters) were terrible, at best. At worst, they were outright fraudulent.

Not to mention Philip Carlo, I tried reading Gaspipe be it was too painful

I think maybe pistone was dirty too. I think he crossed lines. I'm sure a lot of you heard the phone call with lefty. That matter of the 250k got blown off as a lie but maybe the wiseguys caught him doing some shit he wasn't supposed to be doing and he had to save face for his fbi bosses. Maybe he took the opportunity to pocket some bundles of cash under the radar. I don't have evidence of course, but given how far he made it and the implications made on wiretaps, perhaps he wasn't such a boy scout. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

That one with Pistone in front of the Motion Lounge cracked me up when I watched it.

Biggest mob documentary bullshitter for is Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski. I was always waiting for him to claim he was the second shooter in Dallas, when President Kennedy was assassinated, or claiming he killed Hitler in 45'. He was so full of shit.

Depalma had or was going to propose jack for membership.


There is a wiretap recording of them on youtube , it record them talking about it while driving around in gregs pt cruiser.


Greg : The only thing im striving for is to get you done asap.
Greg: You want it right? You would be the second!
Garcia :Yeah i would be honoured, i would never let you down.

I was suprised to learn Garcia is 62! He does not look it imo

The book is good, however there are some questionable events that lead you to believe they were just added to the story for a laugh.

Like the time Garcia got out of hospital and him deplama and vaccaro went to a resturant.
Greg went all serious and said " i think we got a rat" and pointed to garcia.
Then burst out laughing and pointed to a wire that was still attached to his shirt from hospital.
Garcia said he thought they had busted his cover!

Or the time when Depalma said " lets go for a ride". He took him to a jewellery shop and bought him a diamond pinkie ring! Presented to him and said " your with me now" this ring indicates nobody gonna can move in on you! Vaccaro was there!

I think Garcia fancied himself as a bit of a mobster after that operation.
he started wearing tony soprano style bowling shirts and lots of gold jewellery!

If I'm a skipper I'm taking the new guy out and making him beat the shit out of somebody third or forth time he comes around. Jack Garcia didn't do the FBI any favors when he explained what an undercover fed can and cannot do to another human being.

Who was the guy who made up a story about being Joe Masseria's grandson? I think he became some sort of evangelical Christian and had this backstory of being an ex NY gangster who found God.

He was featured on a tv show, I vaguely remember seeing it on youtube.

Kuklinski was so full of shit, it was embarrassing. By the time he claimed that he did the hit on Carmine Galante, I threw up from laughing.

Are you talking about Tom Papania? Here is Papania on the 700 club...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8t6WoUmSO8

I'm surprised that some of you think Pistone was full of shit - or dirty. There was a contract on Pistone, even it it was just so the mob could save face and was more for show. When Lefty got out of prison he went to Massino and requested permission to kill Pistone and Massino turned him down. You can't blame him for how a documentary is edited. He sits there and answers questions and a production company takes care of the rest. I am generally not a fan of police, but I find it impossible not to respect Pistone. It was a big deal what he did at that time.

"When Lefty got out of prison he went to Massino and requested permission to kill Pistone and Massino turned him down."

Never heard that before. I thought he was dying and got a compassionate release and died soon after. Pistone must have been spreading that.

I wish I could remember the source but I can't. But since Massino turned informant its probably true. Anyways, apparently the FBI somehow knew about this request and the talked to Massino about it. Massino told them that they were not going after Pistone.

Massino also said the Sonny Black was not killed because of Pistone. He said that Sonny Black was making moves to take over. Capeci wrote about it on gangland. Here it is:
This Week In Gang Land April 14, 2011
By Jerry Capeci
Massino: As Mafia Boss I Had The Power Of Life & Death

Siskel and Ebert gave Donnie Brasco “two thumbs up.” But when a prosecutor asked Joseph Massino for his take on the classic gangster movie, he grimaced and held his hand in front of his face. Then he wiggled his fingers back and forth in that shaky motion that most closely translates as “Mezza-mezza.” Or perhaps, “Eh.”
“Objection!” thundered the defense attorney. “Sustained,” said the judge, ending Joe Massino’s career as movie reviewer.
Jurors were instructed to ignore this part of Massino’s historic appearance as the first official New York Mafia boss to testify for the government – in this case, against a fellow former Bonanno crime family big, onetime acting boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous)Basciano.
Thankfully, Gang Land is not required to adhere to the trial judge’s admonitions. For that matter, it’s hard to fathom how jurors will get it out of their heads since Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis was forced to repeat the shaky hand motion when he ruled it off-limits. At any rate, let it be officially recorded here that the first movie review by an ex-mob chieftain delivered from the witness stand was “No Stars!”
Not that the 68-year-old Massino lacked for insight about the inner-workings of the Bonanno family of that era. In fact, he is presumably better-equipped than anyone to pass judgment on the accuracy of the big-screen portrayal of FBI agent Joe Pistone’s undercover work against the crime family from 1976-to-1981.
In any event, once his movie review was over, the burly ex-Mafia boss proceeded to deliver several new revelations, each of which partially explained why he might think the movie version of the Brasco affair was no great shakes.
First, he debunked a long-held theory that a pair of mob murders of that era stemmed from anger at mobsters who were hoodwinked by the FBI agent. Under questioning by assistant U.S. attorney Taryn Merkl, Massino said that he was “made” on June 14, 1977 – a year after Pistone began his undercover role – and learned about the agent’s work soon after the FBI disclosed it in the summer of 1981 to Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano, the wiseguy who wanted to sponsor Pistone for induction.
Contrary to what prosecutors alleged at Massino’s 2004 trial – and what was implied in the 1997 movie – Sonny Black’s murder in August of 1981, a month after the feds pulled the plug on Pistone’s sting operation, was not payback for Napolitano’s role in vouching for Donnie Brasco, the jewel thief that Pistone pretended to be for five years.
Massino said that Sonny Black had told him that three FBI agents had alerted Napolitano that the “knock-around guy” he had known for several years as “Donnie Brasco” was really an FBI agent. Napolitano said the agents warned him that “if anything happens to [Brasco], we’re going to have a lot of trouble,” said Massino, adding that Napolitano’s sudden problems were unrelated to the Brasco fiasco.
“Sonny Black threatened to make a move on the family,” said Massino, recalling that he took part in the slaying and was part of a three-capo panel that was running the crime family for then-imprisoned boss Philip (Rusty) Rastelli that authorized the rubout. (Sonny Black looks into the camera as he and "Donnie Brasco" catch some rays at a Florida pool in 1980.)
Massino also dismissed reports that the demise of Bonanno wiseguy Anthony Mirra, whose February 1982 murder was long linked to his own Donnie Brasco dealings, was related to Pistone’s undercover work. Instead, Massino testified, that slaying stemmed from a belief that Mirra, a longtime drug dealer had become a secret “cooperator for the DEA.”
Massino, who is expected to face stiff cross-examination today about his assertion that Basciano ordered the 2004 murder of mob associate Randolph Pizzolo, stressed during his direct testimony that he was an all-powerful crime boss who had the power of life and death over wiseguys years before he took over the crime family in 1991.
He also explained the rationale behind another mob rubout: Disrespect. While he was on the lam in 1984 – ducking trial for the murders of three capos in 1981 – Massino said he learned from Rastelli’s brother and his own brother-in-law Salvatore Vitale, who was then a capo, that Rastelli was planning to whack Cesare Bonventre, a member of the family’s Sicilian faction who had extorted about $600,000 from a drug dealer who was close to Rastelli.
When Bonventre was called on the carpet about it by Rastelli, (right) not only did he deny the allegation, “he got insulted” by the inquiry and “got up and walked away,’ without so much as a polite good bye to his already steaming Mafia boss.
“You can’t do that with bosses,” said Massino. “That’s why he died.”
Rastelli also wanted to whack Bonventre’s long time buddy and partner in the crime and the insult, Baldo Amato – the duo played key roles in the 1979 rubout of wannabe Bonanno boss Carmine (Lilo) Galante – but Massino thought that was a bad idea, he testified.
“I saved him,” he said. “I sent word to the old man. I said, ‘Listen, he’s listening to his captain. We can’t just keep going on killing and killing and killing. He’s following orders just like I follow orders.’ He said, ‘You’re right,’ and he gave him a pass.”
Yesterday, prosecutors played tape recordings of jailhouse talks that Massino had with Vinny Gorgeous in January of 2005 – which Gang Land first disclosed thatSeptember – in which Basciano admits ordering a close associate to whack Pizzolo.
In his opening remarks to the jury, defense lawyer George Goltzer conceded that Basciano admitted ordering Pizzolo’s slaying while he was behind bars but insisted that his client was lying to his all powerful boss in order to save the life of Dominick Cicale, a close associate who had whacked Pizzolo on his own.
Goltzer conceded that Basciano was a powerful mobster who had committed numerous crimes, but insisted that he had nothing to do with ordering the December 1, 2004 murder of Pizzolo. His purpose in telling his mob boss he ordered the slaying was solely to protect Cicale from retaliation from Massino for having acted without prior approval.
The defense lawyer implored jurors to listen to the tapes “as many times as you want” during deliberations, assuring them that when all the evidence is in, “the only fair inference is that Vincent Basciano is saying what he has to say to save DominickCicale.”
It’s hard to determine what the jury will ultimately decide, but one irony of the defense lawyer’s words is that if Vinny Gorgeous was indeed trying to save Cicale from Masssino, his old pal hasn’t expressed much gratitude. He has already testified against him twice, and is slated to follow Massino to the stand.
A second irony is that no matter what the outcome of the trial, Vinny Gorgeous, who is serving life without parole for one mob murder, will leave prison in a body bag some time in the future

To me the guy who appears on just about all documentaries whose story is so played out (Much more that Pistone and Henry Hill before Henry died) is Michael Franzese. He never mentions that he cooperated with the government, contrary he says he never ratted. Just come clean Franzese and bag that religion story of yours.

Its hard to believe that Sonny Black was not killed because of the Pistone situation...but Massino would know better than me I guess.

Midetroit a lot of people on his board will tell you that MAssino was covering his ass, making stories up , etc, etc. etc. You have to draw your own conclusions on this.

It's bullshit. They were never going to hit a Fed. And it was Big Paul who the Feds approached, not Massino. If you're going to go by books, at least get the story straight. Castellano laughed at the agents and said something like, "if you know anything about us, you know we'd never go along with that."

Lefty screaming for revenge in prison and Commission approval are two entirely different things. I don't personally believe that Pistone was dirty. I don't know where that came from. But his ego was out of control with those sunglasses and that self-important bullshit about a mafia contract still being out on him .