FBI Russo intervie · Carmine Russo June 18, 2008 Page 3 3 R: That actually helped me more than, I guess, my first semester or two in elementary school. So much so that I believe

© Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc. 2008

Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Carmine F. Russo (1978-2002) Brian R. Hollstein, Interviewer Interviewed on June 18, 2008

Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on August 25, 2008. Final edit with Mr. Russo’s corrections made by Sandra Robinette on September 10, 2008. Hollstein/ (H): [My name is] Brian Hollstein and today’s date is 6/18/08. I’m talking to Carmine

Russo on the telephone and Carmine is in Staten Island, New York. Russo/ (R): That’s correct. H: You already have received the copyright form, you’ll be sending that back to me. R: That’s right. H: Just before we get started here I’d ask that we’d be careful to stay away from any

classified information that might be coming up in our discussion. If you’re talking about an informant, even if they’re dead, use some sort of a pseudo name, give them a name of some kind that you can use. Please don’t use the official Bureau designation, the numerical designation or any other code name designation for the informant. We want to avoid classified information as I mentioned. We also want to avoid sensitive investigative techniques as best we can.

The transcript will be reviewed by the Bureau for classified information but it’s better if we can avoid it at the beginning here and then in the future if we want to use this material on, as a recording, it’s a lot better if we can, if it’s clean and no classified information on it. With that said, where were you born and when?

R: I was born in the island of Sicily in Italy in 1946. You might say I’m a war baby. H: Uh huh. R: And I came to America almost precisely fifty-three years ago on the fifteenth of

June of 1955. My father and mother, courageous as my father was to leave for a land that he knew nothing about. To provide an opportunity for a better life for his family in a land that had been through a war, a very, very lengthy war and with no possibility of economic well-being for his family so I think it was one of the most important things in my father’s life to bring us to America.

Carmine Russo June 18, 2008 Page 2

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H: Absolutely. I come from an immigrant, well my grandparents were immigrants on one side, and my wife’s grandparents on both sides were immigrants. It’s tough just to pick up and go some place where you don’t know anybody and they don’t speak your language and what have you. It’s a tough one.

R: (Laughing) It was very, very difficult at first. H: Well as a little kid now you were, you were old enough now so you knew what

was going on. R: Yes. I had two younger sisters. But I, being the oldest, mom and dad relied on

me for a lot of things, especially in the early days. My father was in construction, God rest his soul, and mom worked in a “sweat shop.” Both of them, of course, relied on little Carmine to help them when they needed to be helped with their translations, and so on.

H: Sure. R: With letters to write back to the old country so that’s how I kept up with the

language; through them and, later on, through my wife, whom I married when I was in the Navy.

H: Uh, huh. Was she Italian also? R: Yes. My wife and I were born in the same hometown. H: Oh, oh, what do you know? Go right back to the old hometown. R: It’s a long story. It’s in a book that was written about me by Ralph Blumenthal,

but that’s another day. H: Okay, we’ll go back to that in a little bit. So you were here, age nine, and you

learned your English in school then? R: Well there’s a little addendum to that. I started in parochial school and the nun

placed me in the last seat, last row and actually just left me there for the first semester. So I relied upon the little friends that I made on the street where I lived, in Brooklyn, as well as comic books that I was introduced to very early on, through the pictures and then, finally, worked myself up to the actual written words.

H: Uh huh.


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R: That actually helped me more than, I guess, my first semester or two in elementary school. So much so that I believe it was the reason that I was in spelling bees by the second year that I was in school.

H: Is that right? So you had a mind for that then? R: Yes, I always had a mind for reading, history and so on. H: And language in general it sounds like. R: That’s right. H: Yeah, yeah. Then after elementary school as I see here you went to Boys High

School in Brooklyn? R: I did. I principally studied Latin because my first calling was to become a priest

and when my father heard that, being the only son, he said, “Impossible.” H: (Laughing) R: That would be the end of our name, family name, and so I guess I agreed with

that. H: (Laughing) Well that was always a matter of pride though. R: Yes, it was. H: Having somebody go into the religious orders. Yeah. R: I’m very close to the church and I served as an altar boy until I was eighteen. H: Oh, great. So once out of high school and you made your commitment then to

secular life, off to the Navy? R: Yes. One year after dropping out of college because my father wanted me to

become an electrical engineer, and I had no calling for that whatsoever. H: Uh, huh. R: The Viet Nam had already started. I chose to serve in the Navy as my father had

done in the Italian Navy, H: Uh, hmm.


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R: I’m glad I did because at the end of my four year enlistment in 1969, my lottery number was number fourteen so, by that time, I had completed my service there for the United States.

H: Uh, huh. Well that worked out pretty well then. That would move you up right? R: Yes, it did. H: Military service? R: Yes, yes. And I reaped the benefits of it immediately after I was separated from

the Navy in 1969. H: Uh, huh. So your citizenship then started in sixty-nine? R: Not really. My folks received their naturalization in 1960 and being that the law

also allowed dependents to attain the citizenship likewise. I was able to obtain that citizenship and naturalization in 1960 also.

H: Oh, okay, so that you rode in with your parents then? R: Yes, once they were naturalized I was able to apply and I was afforded

naturalization myself. H: Uh, huh. Then it says here you worked for a brokerage firm for a year and then

saw the light and went with the New York P.D. huh? R: Yes, yes. My fervent hope was to become a police officer. Unfortunately I wore

glasses and at that time the requirements were very strict, twenty/thirty and I was unable to become a police officer but I did join the Department in a civilian capacity. I served in the Intelligence Division, Organized Crime Section, for three years.

H: Uh, huh. Now that was in what, 1970 then? R: 1973, yes. H: Uh, huh. I was in New York at that time with the Bureau in organized crime too.

I remember that the cooperation with the P.D. and the intelligence people at working level was pretty darn good.

R: It was. It was also during the period of time of Colombo and his organization

which basically brought the limelight of organized crime into the streets of New York.


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H: Yeah, yeah. R: With Mr. Colombo’s attempted assassination. H: Well things were, things were changing a lot. The Bureau hadn’t been doing very

well, I don’t think with intelligence and organized crime. They were forming squads when I got there in seventy-two and they were pushing it very heavily and were doing a lot of intelligence work at the time. So you were in the intelligence, what did you do there, at the P.D.?

R: I worked in the main, you might say, right under the commanding officer. H: Uh, huh. R: And I, basically, coordinated all the communications that came in and prepared

transmittals to the Commissioner’s Office pertaining to the investigations that were being conducted in the office.

H: Did you do much translation work then? R: At that time, no. My language was not used, and that’s one of the major reasons

why I joined the Bureau eight years later. H: Uh, hmm. R: Because I felt a part of me, part of my knowledge and attributes were not being

utilized to the fullest, to give back. That was the prominent reason why I finally; it was one of the last agencies that I applied to was the FBI because I felt that there was a need for someone like myself to utilize all of the skills, and I wasn’t able to do that with my prior service both with the NYPD and with the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

H: Uh huh, uh huh. So after that, I’m looking at notes here, in April of seventy-eight

then you went to Quantico? R: Yes, the highest and most proud moments of my life. H: (Laughing) How was the, the recruitment from that? Did you actually apply to the

Bureau or did the Bureau approach you on that? R: No, I applied to the Bureau directly through the New York Office. H: Uh, hmm.


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R: I was accepted and I was very, very surprised because I didn’t think that anyone born in Sicily, with an Italian name, would have had the opportunity to serve for the FBI.

H: Uh, hmm. I think it was probably a fairly rare. There were lots of Italians, people

of Italian extraction in the Bureau R: Right. H: But a native type was, was fairly rare, I would think. R: Very rare. Prior to my knowledge in coming to the FBI, I didn’t know of anyone

born in Italy that had been accepted by the FBI. H: Uh, hmm. R: They may have been in a, probably, a support position, but not as an Agent

position. H: Uh, hmm. R: That may have to be documented of course, but I had never met anyone while I

was in the Bureau. H: Well it’s kind of interesting being a trail blazer then. R: Well it was very fortuitous because of the case that we later took on, and it helped

others like myself who were born in Italy, and other countries of course, to work for the FBI.

H: Yeah. So in seventy-eight in you go, and went through training at Quantico and

then also in, I guess, in Washington too, right? R: Yes. But at my request, at the Academy, I requested to come back to New York

because my family was there. H: Uh hmm. R: Everyone in my class, the twenty of us who survived, laughed at me, saying, “Ha,

ha.” Well, out of the twenty, fourteen made it down to New York through the years.

H: (Laughing).


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R: I, you might say, had the last laugh. H: Yeah, yeah. R: That was my own request. I’m glad I came back to New York because my earlier

eight year law enforcement experience helped tremendously in preparing me for what I would be able to undertake while in a New York Division.

H: Sure, well you knew lots of people by that time from the police intelligence and

also from the Attorney General’s Office and you were really a seasoned guy. R: That’s right. It gave me an entrée directly and, one of the first things I did, was re-

establish my connections with the N.Y.P.D. Intelligence Division where I had worked eight years before.

H: Now which squad did you go to? R: I started on the Bank Robbery Squad which was very good. It taught me

specifically the paper work which I, of course, had no knowledge of before entering the Bureau.

H: Sure. R: Gave me the opportunity to work with a seasoned Agent who taught me the

“ropes.” I demonstrated from the beginning that I was someone who was willing to learn, of course, put my attributes to the use of the Bureau.

H: Uh, hmm. R: As much as possible. H: So how long did you spend on bank robberies then? R: One year on the Bank Robbery Squad and, during that time, I was immediately

dispatched to Tucson, Arizona to work on the Joe Bonanno case, which had been initiated by the Phoenix Division as well as the San Francisco Division.

H: Uh, huh. So what was going on out there? R: Well Mr. Bonanno, of course, even though he had been exiled from New York in

1965, had transplanted his operation as far as organized crime activities in Tucson H: Uh, hmm.


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R: Of course his sons moved out to California specifically in the vicinity of San Jose, and that’s where the case basically took off. He was involved, one of his underlings, who happened to be one of his nephews, and committing various crimes out there.

H: Uh, hmm. R: And the investigation basically centered on the activities in San Jose and the

suborning of perjury, and so on and so forth. H: Oh. R: Apparently, people had testified in the Grand Jury. H: Okay, we’ll come back to that in a bit, but you worked in New York then, you

then headed out to Rome, right, Legat? R: Worked in New York for the first six years of my Bureau time. At the end of my

six years, I was promoted to Supervisor. I went to headquarters for a brief period of time.

H: Uh hmm. R: It came at a time when the former Director Webster was looking for someone to

continue the relationship that we had struck up with the Italian authorities, which had led to the fruitful investigation called the Pizza Connection Case

H: Uh hmm. R: Another individual had been proposed to the Director to be sent to Rome but that

individual, who was the undercover Agent in the ABSCAM case, was nearing the end of his career. Judge Webster, in his vision, saw that we needed to send someone who could be there for awhile and continue the relationship that had been struck with the Italians.

H: Uh hmm. R: And that’s when Frank Storey, my former ASAC, submitted my name to Judge

Webster, and the rest is history. H: Okay. So you’re there about five years and you came back to New York again

right?


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R: Yes. I chose to come back to New York because of a personal reason, which I won’t get into, but I’m glad I did because it afforded me the opportunity again to work the streets, which I loved to do.

H: Uh hmm. So then you worked Gambinos, I see and a lot going on there. R: Yes. It came at a time when the Bureau, finally, was able to mount a substantive

case against the current boss at that time of the Gambino Family, John Gotti. H: Uh huh and then, then you headed out back in ninety-seven I guess. You headed

back to the American Embassy? R: Yes, Director Freeh came to me the latter part of ninety-six and asked me once

and asked me twice. H: (Laughing) They don’t ask more than that, do they? R: No, and after the second time I told my wife, I said, “Carmela, I can’t say no to

the man and there’s a need for me to go back.” My sons weren’t too happy about it, but I saw it as an opportunity again to serve the Bureau in the best of my abilities, and I definitely went back in January, 1997.

H: So you were there were a couple of years and then back again? R: Yes, I had a choice to either come back to New York or another office and I chose

to go back to the Newark Division to serve out my time in the Bureau. H: Uh huh and you were in what? An R.A. then? R: R.A. yes. H: And then you retired in 2002. R: Almost twenty-four years to the month, anyway. H: Wow, okay. Let’s go back and pick out a few things here and we’ll get started

with the Bonanno family. So you went out west to help with the investigation out there. Was the fact that you were a Sicilian, native Sicilian speaker, was that useful out there?

R: That was instrumental because the old man, even though he had come to America

in 1922, he still spoke with his underlings in organized crime and others in his native tongue, which was the Sicilian dialect.


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H: Uh, hmm. R: And at that time, I don’t believe there were too many speakers in the Bureau who

spoke the dialect. While I went out there I also met another individual who was a translator at the time. His name was Joseph Genovese, who thereafter also became an Agent. The two of us shared the responsibilities for the month of October of 1978 to monitor all of the conversations that we intercepted over the wiretap that was initiated in Tucson, Arizona.

H: Uh, hmm. Yeah that was one of the early Title IIIs then? R: Yes, one of the early Title IIIs that I was involved. Actually, the first Title III I

was involved with in the FBI. H: Uh hmm. R: You might say that it was a specialty of mine because in my earlier years, with the

Attorney General’s Office, in New York, I also served in the capacity of a listener in many, many wiretaps. Specifically, one of the major cases we worked was the theft of the French Connection Narcotics from the New York City Property Clerk’s Office

H: Oh yeah, that was a big deal. R: Yes, it was. H: Yeah. Now the, you, you were involved in all of this in a time of transition

because the old, they used to be called Mustache Pete’s, right? R: That’s correct, yes. H: The guys who were immigrants who came over but they were, they dated quite a

bit before this time anyway though, didn’t they? R: Yes, they did, yes. H: So, I guess Bonanno though was one of the last of the ones who really was

Sicilian as opposed to, as being an American? R: That’s correct. H: Yeah.


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R: Unfortunately for law enforcement, many of the people that were involved in, or part of that family, the Bonanno Family, even in New York of course, were unknown to the Bureau and other law enforcement agencies. In particular, that came to light as a result of the assassination of Carmine Galante.

H: Uh, hmm. R: On July 12 of 1979. It was through that investigation that the first, the NYPD

realized that we had, in fact, individuals of Sicilian origin as members and associates of the Bonanno family.

H: So this was a little bit like, like watching the Sopranos. R: That’s correct. H: Where they started to import guys from Sicily. Maybe movies aren’t a good thing

to use but it was an example though and it actually was happening. R: It was happening and fortunately, as I said in my preface, most of law

enforcement did not know of these individuals. They started to come here at the beginning or middle of 1965 to the early 1970s. They traveled here because of the added investigations of the Italian authorities in that period of time, forcing a lot of them to leave for other areas of the world, including South America and Australia.

H: Uh, hmm. R: But again it was a period of transition like you mentioned. We, the FBI in

particular, were not paying too much attention to these people because being who they are, they’re very close to the vest, they don’t let outsiders to enter their realm.

H: Right. R: And therefore we never really had any informants providing us information

pertaining to their activities and type of businesses they were setting up like pizzerias, construction companies and wearing apparel stores.

H: Uh. hmm. R: Which we found out, of course, through the investigation that commenced

sometime in 1980.


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H: So the Pizza Connection was just sort of a way to name it but a lot of the connection was through people who had pizza.

R: That’s correct, pizzerias. H: Pizza parlors that were distributing R: One of the main avenues of laundering money because it’s a cash business. H: Uh, hmm. Okay, how long were you out there working the Bonanno stuff, out

west? R: After leaving the Bank Robbery Squad for a year, we worked Corruption for a

year and then, in 1980, the squad was turned into the Bonanno Squad in the Brooklyn Queens Office, out of New York.

H: Uh, huh. R: And my partner became one of the Agents, whom I worked with on the Bank

Robbery Squad, Charles Rooney, H: Right. R: He and I teamed up and we were basically given a sheet of paper by our

Supervisor, Manny Gonzalez, and I was tasked to look at the activities of a guy named Cesare Bonventre, who was also born in Sicily, actually from the same area where Bonanno came from, as well as, Charlie got the target Salvatore Catalano, who came from Palermo, a town outside of Palermo.

H: Right R: It was from there that we both started our intelligence gathering. You might say

from 1980 to 1981, parts of ’82, we basically spent most of our time learning who these people were, their activities, who they met with, who they were in contact with. We started pen registers and so on. We really had an intensive, intensive effort into learning who these people were and finally identified for all of us, not only for the FBI, but even our friends in the NYPD, as well as the DEA, even DEA didn’t know these individuals.

H: Hmm. R: That we had, in fact, a large organization operating in New York whom we

suspected, not only of dealing in the normal organized crime activities, but principally drugs.


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H: Okay. Now, pardon me slowing you down here but there’ll be people reading this who will wonder what a pen register is?

R: Okay, back then it was a device which was not … it was an instrument that was

placed on a telephone line, of course, that allowed law enforcement to gather information pertaining to outgoing calls made from that particular telephone that was under, you might say, surveillance, but really not surveillance because we were not authorized to listen to the conversations.

H: Yeah, you couldn’t hear anything right? R: No, not at all. It only allowed us to, we know that an incoming was being made

but we could not monitor it of course because we did not have the authorization. H: Uh, hmm. R: But it did give us the impulses of the outgoing calls made to various individuals.

From those outgoing telephone numbers, we were able then to obtain from the New York Telephone Company at the time, or other telephone agencies, the subscribers of the individuals being called. That, of course, was one of our best methods of gathering intelligence as to who these people were in contact with.

H: Right. Now that was done with a warrant, right? R: That’s correct. H: Some kind of warrant R: Yes, we needed to have court authorization to get a pen register. H: But it wasn’t the same as getting a Title III which is a big deal? R: That’s correct. We didn’t have the probable cause to in fact request or get

authorization for a Title III. H: Uh, hmm. But the pen registers would be used in probable cause later on? R: That’s correct. H: Usually, yeah. R: It was instrumental, and of course the intelligence that we learned from the pen

registers was phenomenal.


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H: Uh, hmm. So this was kind of an odd couple, right? R: Oh, yes, it was. H: Irish guy and a Sicilian. R: Yes. Only sons from two distinct cultures, and varying cultures who basically

became brothers. And committed to ensuring that we carried out our duties to the fullest extent that we could and, therefore, you know, identified once and for all who these people were and what they were doing to America.

H: And you’re working for a Hispanic boss. R: Yes. H: Manny Gonzalez. I knew him in the New York Office when I was there. R: Believe it or not I found out, of course, when I had started meeting with, he was

an undercover Agent when I was in the Intelligence Division. He would call the office, “This is Number Nine on duty, or Number Nine off-duty” and he was one of the individuals calling in to me, unbeknownst to me at that time.

H: (Laughing) What do you know? R: Small world. H: It is especially in New York even with eight million people, or whatever it is that

live there. R: Over thirty thousand police officers. H: (Laughing). Yeah, the police department is the size of many small towns. R: That’s correct. H: So the Pizza Connection really then started out in Phoenix? R: Not really. It started out while I was in preparation for the Bonanno trial, but it

came as a result of the assassination of Carmine Galante on July 12, 1979. H: Uh, hmm.


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R: I had to convince the prosecutors that that was the actual beginning. It took a long time to convince them, but it became the principal and starting point in the trial that began in the Southern District back in 1985.

H: Uh, hmm. R: It was the reason; the reason why it became so important is because the Sicilians

and the other members of the, Americanized, Bonanno members they wanted control of the drugs which Galante had. At the time, Galante was trying to be the boss of the family while the actual boss was in jail. He didn’t want to share the proceeds of the drug trafficking activities. Of course there was a big, big meeting with members of both the Italian, Sicilian guys and the American Bonanno guys and it was decided that, for the benefit of everyone concerned, Galante had to be done away with. Then, you know, the drug trafficking activities would continue with everyone sharing in the proceeds.

H: Uh hmm. Now where was the control, now the American LCN crowd, Mafia

crowd at one point, at least, was, was pretty well separated from the Italians? R: Yes. H: Did this start then with the drug importation? R: Yes. There was a major meeting in Sicily in 1957 at the Hotel Delle Palme, in

Palermo, and it was at that time that Bonanno traveled to Sicily along with Carmine Galante, and others. It was then that a decision was made that people would be sent to America. They would come here just like, I guess, people from that other country that sent its own people here from the East. They set themselves in place and then the flow of narcotics started coming into the United States.

H: So there was an actual plan, though? R: Yes. H: And just like an intelligence operation, you’d send out sleepers and they would

get established and then wait for instructions. R: That’s exactly what they did. It was an extension of the Sicilian Mafia arm across

the ocean. H: Well, why did the Americans do this?


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R: Because of greed and money. They were not content to, you know, continue with their normal activities, loan sharking, gambling, prostitution. Drugs were a commodity that provided them with fast money, large amounts of money to the benefit of everyone. Of course the edict was, officially, that they would not deal in drugs but they were doing it; doing it principally in the Bonanno Family and we later learned also the Gambino Family.

H: Yeah, but in doing this they lost their autonomy, as such. R: Yes, but they were relying on people that, ordinarily, they would not deal with,

because they didn’t know them except from a distance or from the “vouching” by others, that these were people that could be trusted in the activities.

H: And these were hard, old-line people, old-time people, right, old-country people? R: Oh, yes, very much so. H: Yeah, so a very different crowd from the Americans. R: Yes. They were set in their ways and they’d fend for themselves in families. H: Now, did the Americans speak Italian well enough? By this time they were what,

second generation at least, right? R: Most of them did not. Some of them still did, but they were individuals who acted

as go-betweens. H: Uh, hmm. So, most of the information that you were able to develop on this case

came from wires? R: Pertaining to their activities? H: Yeah. R: Yes. And also from finally Bob Paquette, an Agent in the New Rochelle office,

was able to open an individual who provided him information pertaining to what was happening to the proceeds of the drug trafficking activities; and that was the last link that we needed to actually get the case going.

H: Without getting too much detail what, how did he get an informant like this? That

sounds like it would be a tough job? R: Well, a phone call to the FBI.


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H: Uh, hmm. R: And that’s how it started. H: Interesting. So that was a major piece of your career. R: Yes, it was. H: This Pizza Connection case. It went to trial, how many people were involved in

the trial? R: The indictment was over thirty. At the time the trial started, we were supposed to

have twenty-two defendants. Unfortunately, along the way, one was dying of cancer, another one was killed and, in the end, nineteen individuals were left at trial. Of the nineteen, after a seventeen month trial, eighteen of the nineteen were convicted.

H: Uh, hmm. That’s tough because the more people you have indicted and on trial,

the harder it is usually to get convictions. R: It was very, very difficult but the prosecution team had a bunch of attorneys who

were really, really top notch; of course, led by Louis J. Freeh, who later became a judge and then Director of the FBI.

H: Uh hmm. R: And it was not only the work of myself, Agent Rooney and, of course, a multitude

of other Agents and support people who helped us throughout the case, but it was the direction and perseverance and trust given to me and Charlie Rooney by Louis J. Freeh that made the case prosecutable.

H: Uh hmm. R: At the same time also resulting in the convictions that we get (unintel). H: So they all went away, almost all went away. Now this was all in Eastern

District? R: No, it was in Southern District. H: Southern, oh. R: Venue was obtained because of the money laundering aspect of the case.


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H: Okay, because the office, your office you were working out of was Eastern District, right?

R: Yes. I went to the Eastern District three times with the case and all three times

they told me that they needed more probable cause, and they lost an opportunity. But in that case I think it was the best thing that ever happened to the Bureau because we obtained the best service, you might say, from the Southern District, that I don’t think we would have obtained from the Eastern District.

H: Was Giuliani there in Southern District at the time? R: Yes. H: Oh, he was the USA? R: Yes. We made him. H: (Laughing). R: (Laughing) Because, as you know, at the end of a case when you come down to

indictment and stuff, it becomes their case but it was our case that made Giuliani. H: Well, it’d have to be buildings full of documents though, you know, as soon as

you’ve got Title IIIs. There’s an enormous amount of paper anyway. R: The support they gave us throughout the case was phenomenal. H: Uh, hmm. R: Starting, of course, with the pen registers. H: Yeah, yeah. Well we had, we had worked with, when I was with the Gambinos,

worked with Barbara Jones and it was … R: I worked with her. H: And was Bart Schwartz there too at the time? R: Yes, he’s still there. H: Yeah they’ve gone onto other things. I guess Barbara is a judge now.


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R: A judge, yes. H: And Bart. I worked for him in a company, after I retired from Xerox. R: Barbara was one of the prosecutors I worked with there early on in the Joe Pistone

Case. H: Oh, is that right? R: Yeah, yeah. H: Yeah she would, she was willing to go the extra mile. R: Yes, she was very, very instrumental in providing us the assistance of Louis J.

Freeh. Without her making that decision I don’t know where we would have gone (laughing).

H: Well that’s great. Anything else I should be asking about on the Pizza

Connection? R: Well it was a concerted effort not only by the FBI but we had the assistance of the

NYPD, DEA, Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service and, last but not least, the Italian authorities.

H: Uh hmm. R: And the relationship that I was able to strike up because of my going there in

1982, with the information that I and Charlie had developed, we gave them everything we had up until that point. In 1982. We had the first joint meeting between ourselves, the Canadians, the Italians and Australians. We also met again in Rome in November, 1982 and I also went to Canada in the beginning of 1983 so, you know, it was one of those things that steamrolled into a relationship and cooperation effort never equaled before that time by the FBI.

H: Well, you know, it’s interesting too because there’s always a lot of noise and

static about the FBI not getting along with the New York P.D., and the rivalries and what have you. And yet this is not the first time I’ve heard of really top level, top drawer communication and cooperation between the two organizations at the working level.


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R: I’ll give you an example. The people that I worked with while I was in the Intelligence Division, Detective Clark, in particular, Jack Clark called me one day in early 1982. He said, “Carmine, I’ve got a couple of detectives from Suffolk County Intelligence that followed a couple of guys from the Bonanno Family into Brooklyn today and they took pictures and I’d like you to take a look at them.” And, of course, they reached out for me and I was able to identify many of the individuals who were subjects of our case.

H: Uh, huh. R: (Laughing). So that’s a striking example of what the type of cooperation that we

had at that time. H: Yeah, yeah and I guess you know what the top of the house, top brass says, or the

commissioner, or the Assistant Director, they don’t get along for some reason but certainly at the working level, it was a lot of cooperation when I was there in the seventies. I’m glad to hear it kept up. So after the successful Pizza Connection then, off you went to Rome.

R: Yes. H: As an Assistant Legal Attaché. R: Five wonderful years, fruitful years. H: How big an office is that, was that there? R: At the time we only had the Legat and two assistants. Basically, I had full

responsibility of the Organized Crime/Drug Program and then we had one Agent who had the Intelligence, FCI side. Of course, the Legat took, you know, responsibility for the maintaining of the office and had some cases also of course.

H: Well this was, still early on. R: This was early on, that’s correct. H: And the Legat process, and when I was in there weren’t that many Legal

Attachés. I guess there was one in Rome, one in Paris. R: Yes. H: Probably London and Ottawa, you know. R: Rome had full responsibility of all of Africa and the Middle East.


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H: (Laughing). R: So you could imagine three individuals trying to cover all that territory. H: Yeah, yeah. R: It was almost impossible. H: But it certainly did establish, though, over time how important it was for domestic

work to have these kinds of connections. R: Yes, of course. We got a lot of flack from the State Department as well as from

other entities but they didn’t like the fact that the FBI was operating overseas. But in criminal work it was essential and we demonstrated that by cooperating with the foreign authorities a lot more could be done than was being done before.

H: No question about that. Let’s see what else I wanted to ask you about the Legal

Attaché. Did you have special training before you went over? R: I received about (laughing) two weeks training at headquarters mostly with

meetings with the State Department personnel. H: Uh, hmm. R: And I did meet with another agency also, but not very much. H: It’s funny we were over in Rome a few years ago. We were walking down a side

street and there was a, in Rome, and there was a brass plate up on the wall there. I think it said something about the anti-Mafia police operations were in that building which I thought was kind of an interesting, interesting thing to have up there. So you were there for?

R: Almost five years. H: Five years. What type of thing were you seeing? Was it mostly drugs?


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R: Both, yes. The drug problem had not been, you know, taken down with our case in the Pizza Connection Case. We also had a very big case involving couriers. They were not basically shipping drugs in containers anymore or with furniture and coffee and things like that. They were now utilizing females to body carry the drugs into the United States. That big operation was called Torretta, what was it called, ‘Iron Tower’ on the American side; Iron Tower. We basically worked that for about a year and a half out of the Philadelphia Division and New York and that came to a culmination early December of 1988,

H: Uh, hmm. R: When all the people, both in the United States and Sicily went down. H: Well how did the, a woman can’t carry that much; we’re talking tons of drugs,

right? R: Two and a half to three kilos at a time strapped to their bodies (unintel). H: And they’re just a lot of them? R: Yes. Many times they would send multiple individuals on the same flight that if

someone got caught, the others would sneak through. H: So you’re talking about what five or six pounds of drugs? R: Yeah they would basically, they were basically women coming from the town

called Torretta, in the Province of Palermo. H: Uh hmm. R: Who basically were in need of money, and they were basically recruited to come

to the States where they would be given a plane ticket, a hotel stay and possibly between seven and ten thousand dollars. Then they would go back and then they would do it again.

H: Uh hmm. R: They were finally caught through the intelligence that was being obtained from

here in the United States as well as the wiretaps that the Italians had down there. H: Uh hmm.


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R: And also through the fact that one of them was caught trying to pass through control in Palermo. She had too much perfume on and that caught the eye of one of the police there.

H: Yeah, interesting. R: They searched her and sure enough that’s what she had. She had about two and a

half, three kilos of heroin. H: Wow. This was called the Torretta Case? R: Torretta, T. H: Oh. R: Actually, the FBI nomenclature was “Iron Tower.” H: Uh, huh. R: It’s a town in the Province of Palermo. H: You wouldn’t be able to get away with that today, would you? R: No. H: (Laughing). R: My son, Frankie when he joined Customs in 1995, God Bless him, he’s now a

Deputy Inspector, and he made a lot, a lot of seizures (laughing) in Customs. H: (Laughing) okay. So where do you live, where do people, is this sort of an

Embassy area where you tend to live in Rome? R: For the most part, the State Department personnel do have a building dedicated to

many of them. No, a lot of us lived within the city or outside the city in either apartment buildings or homes located maybe about half an hour outside of Rome.

H: Well, this was no big deal for you. R: No, not at all. H: Because both of you speak Italian R: Yes.


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H: Fluently, yeah. R: It was a big deal for the kids, especially for the oldest guy. But after the three

months, four months they got acclimated. Then their Italian, of course, brushed up a lot more while being there and, until this day, they value that time I spent in Rome as one of the best times in their lives.

H: Oh yeah, well people pay a lot of money to go over there on vacation (laughing) -

right? R: Oh, yeah, it was great. H: Great deal. R: They didn’t see me much because I worked a lot but it was wonderful for them to

be back there and see where mom and dad had their roots. H: Sure the roots and all. You came back to the U.S. in eighty-nine and you went

into the Gambino crime family in New York; that was in the city? R: In Brooklyn-Queens again. H: Brooklyn-Queens, okay. R: Where I had left before. H: Uh huh. When I was there in seventy-two to seventy-seven we were at 69th Street. R: Right. H: Tom Duffin was the Supervisor and then later on Jim Mulroy. How did that work,

did they keep a desk, a Gambino desk in Manhattan? R: No, no. In 1978, the Brooklyn-Queens Office was opened up and the Gambino

Family was one of two families that were being worked at that time in Queens. H: So it all went over there. R: Yes. H: What, what happened to the Agents then that were in Manhattan, did they go with

it?


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R: No, I think what happened was they, they started a list of course and many of the guys who worked in Queens either came from Long Island.

H: Uh hmm. R: The guys who might have worked in Manhattan and lived in Jersey, for the most

part, they didn’t come to the squad. It was primarily made of individuals who worked or lived in Long Island or here in the surrounding area of Queens.

H: All right. I moved up to New Rochelle when that opened up. Then Brooklyn-

Queens opened up at the same time I guess? R: Right, exactly. H: So people like Brana, Rousel, Playford and Kallstrom and Nally and all that crew

went somewhere else then? R: Yup, Jimmy Kallstrom. H: Yeah, did he stay with it then? R: No, Jimmy, funny you asked. You bring up that name, through my research, my

early research leading up to the Pizza Case, it was Jimmy who was actually looking at these people but he was only able to take the case to a certain point.

H: Uh hmm. R: I really valued some of the intelligence that he developed because I felt sorry for

him because without informants you could only go so far. H: Yeah, yeah. R: And at that time he wasn’t getting the support, of course, that we later got. H: Yeah, well things change. Keep banging away at it and eventually something

breaks loose over time. R: Right, exactly. H: Just, I was just kind of curious I, you know, just having been there around that

time. So at this point then you were, you were interested in Gotti? R: Oh, yes.


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H: Okay. Who did you hook up with when you came back? Were you with Rooney again?

R: No, no. Charlie by that time had become, I believe, a Supervisor for the Drug

Squad that I had left while working the Bonanno Squad; that actually became a Drug Squad.

H: Uh, hmm. R: Bruce Mouw, a former Lieutenant in the United States Navy, submariner, was the

Supervisor on the Gambino Squad. It was very fortuitous that I came back when I did because it was then that they obtained authorization for a Title III on the social club, the Ravenite, in Manhattan, that Gotti had his meetings.

H: Uh hmm. R: And one of the fellows on the squad, Mike Balen, was actually doing all the

reviews and he was being transferred to Minnesota. I told Louie Schiliro, who was the Coordinating Supervisor at the time …

H: This is the second side of our first tape. So you were back and working away on

the Gambinos. While we were off, just getting it turned over, you mentioned that there was quite a bit of loss, wasn’t there?

R: Yes. H: Of institutional knowledge? R: Yes, there was, later on, yes. H: Yeah, with the guys who moved to whatever else was going on. But that wasn’t

that unusual. R: No, no. For it was happening in a space of a few months it was though because

here you had an individual like myself who had spent so much time in New York and knew so much about Organized Crime and two other individuals who were basically institutions also, Matty Tricorico and Frank Spero, they also retired. Another individual, an old-timer who had come from Connecticut, Milo Dowling, he also left; so he had worked Organized Crime in Connecticut with dealings with the Gambinos here in New York so …

H: Uh, hmm.


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R: That was four individuals on the squad that left at the same time and I think it took the squad a little while to get caught up in the intelligence gathering again as we had done before.

H: Now, had things broken loose any, in terms of informant development? R: We had some great informants on the Gambino Squad. But, at the same time,

some of them, once Matty and Frank left, did not want to deal with others. H: Right, that was often. R: Yeah, that was the case. H: Yeah, always very personal, yeah. Was Artie Ruffels working with you? R: Artie was on the squad but he had retired long before we left the squad. H: Uh, hmm. R: He was also very knowledgeable on the squad. Of course he worked a lot of the

Westies Case. H: Right, right. R: He took that knowledge with him also when he left. H: Well the Westies were a problem I gather. I’d spent some time with Artie with an

interview and he brought me up-to-date on that stuff but they were so wild that I guess the Italians were afraid of them, weren’t they?

R: Yes, they were. H: (Laughing) R: They were blood-thirsty individuals. H: Just out of control. R: Out of control. H: Yeah, you didn’t know what was going to happen with them. R: That’s true.


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H: Yeah. So at the time then you did have some penetration of the Gambino Family. R: Yes, we did. It was that penetration that allowed us to place the sophisticated Title

III in the apartment above the Ravenite. H: Uh, hmm. R: With that information we were able to reap the benefits of six, almost one hour

conversations each, that basically brought down John Gotti and about forty other individuals in the family.

H: Uh, hmm. R: From that investigation. H: That really broke things up. R: Yes, it did. It was, as I always mentioned to Bruce and the others on the squad, it

was Gotti’s own words that basically came down on the family. H: Uh, hmm. Now what’s happened to them since? R: Well, I have a direct contact in that squad right now (laughing). It happens to be

my son, Mario. H: (Laughing) Father and son, wow. R: He and some of his other cronies still reach out to me because, believe it or not,

they’re working on individuals who are either getting out of jail or their sons and other relatives are doing the same thing that their other relatives were doing when I was on the squad.

H: So there’s still some Gambinos? R: There certainly are and they’re still up to their old tricks. I don’t know about the

drug trafficking but I know they’re doing a lot of the same stuff that they were doing many years ago.

H: But look at it this way, we’ve got some Russos also working them right? R: (Laughing) Yes. H: (Laughing) So pass the business on from father to son.


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R: The information that he’s able to obtain from me, I fill in some of the gaps that some of the young guys that he’s working with don’t know. Believe it or not, they’re working on individuals that I worked on before I left the Bureau.

H: Yeah, it’s kind of scary, isn’t it? R: It is, it is. You put them away, they come out and they come back out and do the

same thing. H: Yeah, well that’s, that’s what they do, as they say. Now Salvatore Gravano had

his own story though, didn’t he? R: Oh yes, the de-briefings of him at the place where he had him were quite an eye

opener for many of us in, and he was a great teacher also. H: Uh, hmm. R: And this is what I tell a lot of the young Agents even ‘til today. You’ve got to

learn from these individuals and what they told you and concentrate on what they think the FBI or law enforcement should look at. One of the things I always tell the young Agents is: you’re after the big boss but the big boss doesn’t get his hands dirty. That’s what Gravano hit into our head all the time when we de-briefed him.

H: Uh, hmm. R: “We knew you guys were out there looking at us. You’d think we’d be so stupid

as to do things, commit crimes, in your presence? Of course not.” H: Uh, hmm. R: He said, “What did you do after we left or the guys that we were talking to? Did

you follow them or did you follow us?” And of course the answer was, “We followed you guys.”

H: Right. R: “We’re not going to get our hands dirty.” H: Uh, hmm. R: So the lesson learned was: you go after the lower echelon guys and work yourself

up.


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H: See if you can get them “turned” and with witness protection or whatever, yeah. R: That’s the message I sent to the guys. But you know, we’re so caught up in trying

to get the boss, trying to get the big guys and, sometimes, you lose sight of the fact that there are other individuals doing all the dirty work and helping them commit their crimes.

H: That’s interesting because I remember sitting out in front of Carlo Gambino’s

house out there and he’d come out to walk that little white poodle. He’d “Hey how you boys, how’re you doing,” you know and he didn’t do anything.

R: That’s right. H: He didn’t do anything at all. R: That’s what the hierarchy is there for. H: Sure, sure that’s why you want to boss right? R: That’s right. H: If you’re the SAC (laughing) … R: Twenty years he never got caught. H: (Laughing) I see, you know Thomas, were you around at the time when Manny

Gambino was kidnapped? R: I was in the NYPD at the time. H: Uh huh. R: Yeah, I heard about that. H: That was a shocker. R: Yes, it was. H: Because that was, I’m sure it had to be, the first time that anybody ever called the

FBI and reported a kidnap. R: Yes. H: And we were working around a kidnap for the Gambinos.


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R: Did they, if I remember correctly, they paid the ransom and they still killed him? H: Now, yeah, we dug him up. I say we, the guys on the squad dug him up out in

New Jersey on a beach somewhere. R: Uh, hmm. H: And the two guys that killed him were, they weren’t, I don’t think, they weren’t

Italian, no. They were just some characters and they really didn’t know what they’d gotten into and ended up very much concerned. I was concerned. We had to walk out, another fellow and I, because we had suits on that day. We had to walk him out and put them in the car and take them downtown after they’d been booked and (laughing) we were, we were really concerned because the place was ringed with photographers, that somebody was going to try to come up and shoot them.

R: Oh, boy. H: You know, and here we were standing awfully close to the target there, so anyway

this is not my story. So what happened to Thomas and Frank Locascio, did they both go down too? R: Yeah, the convictions in the trial of John Gotti and Frank Locascio were life

imprisonment; multiple life imprisonments. H: Uh, hmm. R: Tom was tried separately and I believe he received a lighter sentence. He didn’t

go away for life. H: Uh, hmm. R: I think he got about five years, if I’m not mistaken. H: So he’s back out now. R: Oh, yeah, yeah he’s out. H: And active in some way or another, I’m sure. R: For sure. H: Yeah. Now Carlo, was he alive at this time?


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R: No, Carlo passed away in 1976. Of course, that basically was the beginning of the demise of the Gambino Family for awhile; the beginning of two factions.

H: Right. R: The Neil Dellacroce faction and the Paul Castellano faction and, of course, John

Gotti and people like him remained loyal to Neil Dellacroce. They felt after Carlo died that Neil should be made the boss. He was the Under-boss. Carlo supposedly told Castellano, that “You’re my brother-in-law; I want you to take control of the family,” which many thought was not true. And Gotti, in particular, never forgave Castellano for that. That’s the reason why he masterminded the assassination in 1985.

H: All kinds of interesting stuff here (laughing). R: (Laughing) I think you could write a book, a number of books. H: Have you written one? R: No. I’ve been asked to, but my wife always keeps telling me, “just mind your

own business. You did enough.” H: (Laughing). R: But that is one of my dreams. I would love some day, if God gives me the grace,

to be around to write a book. H: Well, what happened to Gravano now? R: Gravano was a stupid man. He always told us, “I’m one of youse guys now.”

Yeah, yeah I believe that like a hole in the head. H: Yeah. R: And he basically, you know, got a twenty year sentence which basically became a

five year sentence, got out, went out West settled in, or tried to settle in Arizona, started a business. He wasn’t happy with that and he started dealing in drugs.

H: Yeah, yeah. R: And the locals got him and, I think, he’s away for twenty years. H: Yeah, I think I was out there at the time he was arrested.


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R: A dope, a real dope. You know, that’s all he knew. This guy didn’t know anything else in life except to be a criminal.

H: Yeah, yeah. These people, they’d go away in the witness protection program and

it was so carefully operated. You know it was really very professionally done and they’d get somewhere. Then they’d say, “Do you know who I am?” You know, “I’m not gonna put up with this, I’m a tough guy from New York” and you know (laughing) and blow it. Then they’d scoop him up and move him somewhere else and they just couldn’t stand being straight.

R: He wanted to be in the limelight; that’s all he knew. H: Yeah, yeah. Okay, forty people went down on that one. R: At least, yeah but Gravano, he also cooperated with the Government in providing

information concerning other members of other families in New York. H: Let me, before this, I hear a thunderstorm coming through so it may happen that

I’ll just disappear. R: Okay H: So you know it’s nothing personal. R: Okay. H: All right. We’re getting down towards the end here anyway. Then in ‘77 it was,

huh, you went back as Legal Attaché? R: In 1997. H: So you went back as Legal Attaché, what difference did that make now, as a

Legat? R: It made a big difference H: Another grade or two right?


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R: It was a wonderful to go back as the boss of the office and again re-take, you might say, the relationship that I had with my former colleagues, (unintel) so because one of the, some of the major principals in the Italian Police were now big bosses, one of whom, actually two of them became Chiefs of Police, one through 2000-2007 and now the present one also is a Chief of Police. So I worked directly with them throughout the years in the eighties and, of course, nineties.

And that was great because one of their, quote unquote, sons was coming back,

you know. H: (Laughing) R: It was wonderful. Unfortunately, in 1996, the Italian Government, Parliament

passed a law, privacy law, which forbade authorities to provide information as freely as they used to. As a consequence, the exchange of information was not as free as it had been before. We suffered the consequences accordingly because, I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but the Magistrates basically are almost like the Grand Jury that we have in the United States. They control the investigation of criminal activities there.

H: Uh hmm. R: They tell the cops and the Carabinieri what to do, not the other way around; like

we go to prosecutors, at least we did, for assistance. But over there, yes the cops go there for assistance but, at the same time, it’s the Magistrate who actually directs the investigation once they go to him, and they were not as free as the cops were or the law enforcement agencies that I dealt with to provide information. So it was not the same conditions that I had before, and we suffered for it.

H: It always seems as just as you get good they find something to slow you down. R: I would always point out to them that when Judge Falcone, God rest his soul, was

alive, I said, “You know information was passed on almost instantaneously, and that’s what made our cases move so quickly.”

H: Uh, hmm. R: And so wonderful to work with. But unfortunately the new, well you know what

it was; it was a new government which was a leftist government for a time. H: Uh, hmm.


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R: So they were not as amenable to deal with the Americans as before. H: Yeah. Well hopefully that’ll resolve itself as time goes on. So what, what were,

did the nature of cases changed much in the Legat’s Office? R: Well, organized crime was still there but we got involved more in terrorism cases. H: Uh, hmm. R: Unfortunately we didn’t see the real threat of the terrorist activities that were to

follow later on and I think the intelligence just wasn’t there as it was with other organizations.

H: Uh, hmm. R: And it was a great disappointment to me when I came back finally, after my tour

of three and a half years, to find out that a lot of these individuals that committed the acts that they did in 2001 were actually in our back door in New Jersey and other places and, unfortunately, we didn’t have the intelligence to know exactly who they were and where they were.

H: Yeah. Well once again, the old twenty-twenty hindsight comes in and hopefully

things have changed considerably along those lines. R: Yes. H: Yeah, yeah. So out of Rome, and by this time you had, is that your youngest was

ready to go to college? R: Vinny, yeah. He graduated from school there and Mom wanted to come back to

the rest of the flock. H: (Laughing) R: He was a great soccer player and might have had an opportunity to latch on with

some people there but my wife just didn’t want him to miss out on going to school.

H: Yeah, yeah. Well that’s important. So, then back here and you were in the what

West Paterson Office, out of Newark? R: Right. Organized Crime, Drug Squad. One of my major cases while I was there

was the acting boss of the Genovese Family. We did a Title III of a location where he had meetings during the day, but the acoustics weren’t that good.


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R: Unfortunately a lot of the conversations that they had were not very fruitful. But we learned a lot of intelligence that we exchanged with the New York Division.

H: Uh, hmm. R: And, after I retired, I did speak with one of the Agents that’s still on the squad and

he told me that they did use some of that information to get the guy. He was the acting boss of the Genovese Family at the time. They were able to get a conviction; actually he pled guilty.

H: Well so often you get transferred or retired and then it’s a couple of years later

before what you’d worked so hard on gets, comes to fruition. R: Yes, and on other occasions also. H: Yeah. Anything else you’d like to add or something I might have missed in

questions? R: No, like I mentioned before in the premise before you turned the tape on. It was

an honor. For the opportunity that I was able to provide my services to the Bureau. At a time when my knowledge of a language helped to identify and arrest and prosecute individuals that were heretofore unknown to law enforcement. Cut away the heroin flow from Italy to the United States and at the same time demonstrate to other countries that by cooperating with each other things can be done.

H: Yeah, yeah. Well great, I’ll stop here.

Documents

FBI Russo intervie · Carmine Russo June 18, 2008 Page 3 3 R: That actually helped me more than, I guess, my first semester or two in elementary school. So much so that I believe