La Cosa Nostra Takes the Big Hit

By the time Mafia capo Peter Chiodo looked up from under the hood of his Cadillac, he had already been shot once in the ass. Weighing in at 547 pounds, Chiodo was an easy target. On a dear afternoon in May 1991, after he had stopped at Pellicano's gas station on Stated Island to check his engine, a car screeched into the station and two men jumped out, guns ablaze.

Despite being hit, Chiodo pulled a weapon from inside his jacket and managed to return fire. An auto mechanic standing nearby dove under the Cadillac for cover as the gunmen chased Chiodo around the gas station shooting indiscriminately, riddling the blubbery mafioso with 12 bullets. Chiodo finally fell flat on his back. As blood oozed from his wounds, somebody stole his gun. Then a neighborhood onlooker ran up and exclaimed, "Geez! What a shoot-out!"

The shooting of Peter Chiodo may not have been the sloppiest Mob hit in history, but it ranks right up there. Even with Chiodo's girth and lack of mobility, the hit men failed to get the job done. Four months later Chiodo was wheeled into a New York courthouse. Understandably perturbed by the attempted hit, he turned stool pigeon, testifying about a huge racketeering scheme that allowed four of New York's five Mafia families to seize control of the New York Housing Authority's profitable window-replacement business. He also described his own lucrative career as the Mob's man in control of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades, a job that frequently involved intimidation and murder.

Chiodo's rise and fall eloquently symbolizes the pathetic state of Cosa Nostra, circa 1992. He was a powerful capo grown fat on his own success; he was the intended victim in yet another inept Mob hit resulting in yet another high-level informant; and he was a murderous criminal who was allegedly reformed through his act of contrition and became a card-carrying member of the federal witness protection program. Today, for the first time in history, there may be more "made men" in the criminal justice system than there are on the street.

"Yeah, you could say the Mob is all fucked up," says Joe Pistone, a former FBI agent who went undercover as a mafioso for six years. "There was a time when a guy was supposed to get whacked, he got whacked. Now they even have trouble getting that right."

Henry Hill, the wiseguy whose years in the Mob were immortalized in the movie GoodFellas, says: "It's a horseshit life, the Mob. Always was. I guess more and more guys are starting to see the way they get treated."

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The Mob is currently being chased out of many of its traditional territories. In New England, the powerful Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act has been used to gut the Patriarca family, once a sprawling criminal organization with members in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. In Pennsylvania, the Bufalino family and the murderous Scarfo Mob have been decimated. Nicodemo Scarfo, whose organization controlled the rackets in Atlantic City, is in federal prison with a life sentence. These high-level convictions follow earlier law-enforcement successes in former Mafia strongholds such as New Orleans, Chicago and Cleveland.

In New York, recent prosecutions have overwhelmed the city's infamous five families. Beginning in 1986 with the Commission case, which resulted in three of the most powerful Mafia leaders in America being put away, the legal onslaught has been staggering. In the past four years, leaders from all five families have been busted on RICO charges, culminating in the highly touted conviction of Gambino family boss John Gotti, the alleged capo di tutti capi.

In contrast to their American brothers, mafiosi in Italy still know how to handle a prosecutor. Last May they took out a top Italian Mob buster (Giovanni Falcone) by detonating a bomb as his motorcade drove past. In America, the man might have been peppered with movie offers.

Beginning with the testimony of Joseph Valachi in the early Sixties, the Justice Department--aided considerably by the Mafia's own lack of quality control--systematically eroded the once-vaunted oath of omertà, which historically ensured that those who talked died. Today, with the prospect of long sentences and the existence of the witness protection program as a viable career alternative, stool pigeons such as Chiodo and Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano (the man who brought down John Gotti) willingly come forward.

"The rules have changed," says Ronald Goldstock, director of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. "It used to be that a low-level Mob member might come forward, and he would be seen as a traitor to the organization. Now we've seen mobsters at the highest levels--Bonanno, Fratianno--talk. They not only testify but wear wires, write books and have agents. Their attitude is, 'This is not the same organization it once was. There is no honor left.' Now everyone feels free to break the code."

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Along Mulberry Street, in the heart of New York's Little Italy, the changes have been apparent for some time. A few of the old restaurants remain, including Grotta Azzurra and Umberto's Clam House, where Crazy Joe Gallo got whacked while having a late-night snack. Neon signs still advertise cappuccino, espresso and Italian pastries, sold mostly to tourists in the neighborhood. Scenes from all three Godfather movies were filmed in Little Italy, and the Italian residents who remain seem determined to keep up appearances. Italian flags flutter from lampposts and the sounds of Sinatra emanate from corner smoke shops.

In reality, the neighborhood is a dwindling ethnic enclave overrun by more recent immigrants, mostly from Southeast Asia. Mott Street is still lined with seafood and produce stands, as it has been for generations, but the merchants are Chinese and Vietnamese rather than Italian and Jewish.

John Gotti hung out regularly in Little Italy right up until his most recent arrest and resulting conviction. To admirers, Gotti's insistence on maintaining links to the old neighborhood reflected well on his sense of tradition. It was here, in a hallway in the back of the Ravenite Social Club, that Gotti was recorded wishfully telling an underling: "This is gonna be a Cosa Nostra till I die. Be it an hour from now, or be it tonight, or a hundred years from now when I'm in jail. It's gonna be the way I say it's gonna be--a Cosa Nostra."

At one time such confidence would have been justified. Long before Gotti sipped his first cup of cappuccino on Mulberry Street, the concept of a criminal underworld had taken root. At the turn of the century, the Black Hand ruled the tenements and small businesses of Little Italy in New York and elsewhere. Tireless extortionists, members of the Black Hand sought to establish themselves as men of virtue, as mediators in a bustling, fresh-faced immigrant community.

As the newcomers assimilated, things changed. Leaving the antiquated ideas of the Sicilian Mafia behind, the new generation of mobsters embraced free-market capitalism. During Prohibition they were handed a product that everyone wanted and a marketplace without competitors. Naturally, their businesses thrived and they were able to expand and diversify.

Over the decades, the Mafia derived much of its strength from links with the so-called legitimate establishment. In dozens of cities across the U.S., the Mob became deeply enmeshed in the fabric of American society through political connections and influence with organized labor. Although the Mafia never really had the national hierarchy some journalists and historians suggest, virtually every major industrial city had an organized crime structure loosely based on Charles "Lucky" Luciano's model, whether it was called the Commission, the Syndicate, the Outfit or Cosa Nostra.

The reason behind the success of the Mob was clear. Omertà was caught up with the Italian image of honor and manliness. It is not manly to snitch. The very foundation of the Mob was based on the idea that if a member spoke to the police, the press or even to other associates about his criminal dealings, he would sleep with the fishes.

"It's extraordinary, when you think about it," says Ralph Salerno, a former New York City supervisor of detectives and a consultant to congressional committees on organized crime. "Luciano forms the Commission around 1931, and for thirty years nobody talks. Some five thousand people across the country, all facing prison time, some faced with capital punishment, some being offered the opportunity to cooperate, and not one of them spoke. That's the power of omertà."

The legend grew, causing the Mob to be seen by many as an omnipotent international force. In the Fifties and Sixties the Mafia was credited with, among other things, building Las Vegas, underwriting Batista's Cuba, delivering Kennedy's victory in the 1960 presidential election and then helping to assassinate the man they supposedly elected. Never mind that most mobsters dropped out of school around the eighth grade, rarely left their own neighborhoods and showed a proclivity for getting arrested and re-arrested. In the public mind it was a highly sophisticated organization that controlled both church and state.

In truth the Mob's authority has usually been aimed at the lower rungs of society. The victims, invariably, are working-class stiffs caught among corrupt unions, politicians and Mafia thugs eager to endear themselves to the powers that be. As the late godfather Paul Castellano once put it when describing to an associate the plight of the working man: "How many of them are so fucking stupid that they would knowingly try to fuck us? All right, now and then there's a guy who has delusions. A lunatic. . . . He thinks he's got a whole union or a big politician protecting him. . . . But usually it's just sadass guys who make mistakes. . . . Do we let these sorry bastards ride? Hey, they knew the rules."

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"I'll tell you about the Mob," says a veteran wholesaler at New York's Fulton Fish Market, long known as a classic Mob racket. "Down here, they operate just like the government, only more so."

Situated in lower Manhattan in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Fulton Fish Market is a throwback to an earlier era. In the pre-dawn hours the market is alive with commercial activity. Burly laborers "work the pallet," loading and unloading refrigerator trucks. Forklifts rumble across cobblestone streets, fishmongers haggle over prices and the salty aroma of fresh (continued on page 114)Cosa Nostra(continued from page 92) seafood permeates the air. Despite the fact that the market has shrunk by half in the past 30 years, it is still the nation's largest. Each year more than 125,000,000 pounds of seafood, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, are bought and sold within the market's quaint five-block radius.

In 1987 the federal government declared the area a Mafia-run enterprise and vowed to return it to legitimate owners. Using civil RICO legislation, a judge appointed an administrator to oversee market operations. When public hearings were held last May to reveal the administrator's findings, witnesses wore black hoods and testified from behind a screen, hoping to avoid Mob retribution.

The threat of violence has been an effective regulating factor in the market since the Twenties. In those days, Joseph "Socks" Lanza, a capo in the Genovese family, controlled all rackets through his role as business agent for Local 359 of the United Seafood Workers. The market became a world unto itself. Extortion, labor payoffs, gambling and obstruction of justice became enduring traditions.

In 1984 a market worker who was hijacking fish trucks was shot twice in the head and left to die on a market street. A few years later a local restaurateur parked his car in an unassigned location during market hours. He and a companion were pulled from the car and beaten with loading hooks and a hand truck. In the summer of 1990, when a worker who was banned from the market by one employer showed up to work for another, he was beaten with a lead pipe and wound up in the hospital. The incident occurred in a street crowded with workers and wholesalers. But when the cops asked around, there were no witnesses.

The mode of operation at the Fulton Fish Market is the same as that employed in other major Mob rackets, especially those in the garment trade, the International Longshoreman's Association and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Mob ensures there will be little or no competition. Inflated licensing fees and union pension funds are used to line the pockets of Mafia members. The climate of violence is so pervasive that even the city abdicated its responsibilities to a brutal form of underworld justice.

No one is claiming today that the Mob has been eradicated from the Fulton Fish Market, but the government has finally established a presence. The city's Department of Investigation ran a sting operation on a group of illegal gun merchants in the market. Many fair-trade violations were cited, the violators were named in court documents and sanctions are being imposed. The city of New York was shamed into hiring managers and inspectors for the market.

Similar actions were taken against the ILA, the garment industry and the Teamsters. In the past three years state and civil RICO suits have been filed and government administrators assigned. In the case of the Teamsters, a 1989 civil racketeering suit resulted in a revolutionary change in leadership, with the union's national elections being opened to the rank and file for the first time in history.

"The big criminal convictions make the headlines," says Frederick Martens, executive director of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission. "But civil RICO has done more than all the criminal convictions put together to hit organized crime where it hurts most--at its economic base."

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With recent government successes in criminal and civil litigation, there's little doubt the Mafia has been wounded. But it would be wrong to give all the credit to American law enforcement. The decline of the Mafia has come about as much through evolutionary changes in society as through the actions of cops and prosecutors. The unionized industrial economy of postwar America has given way to a high-tech economy. Businesses such as the Fulton Fish Market are becoming a thing of the past. Urban political machines--once wide open to Mob corruption--have lost power to interest groups and political action committees.

Throughout society, Italian Americans have assimilated. Forty years ago a wayward working-class kid of Italian heritage might have considered the Gambino or Bonanno crime family as a career choice; today he's more likely to think about St. John's or Georgetown. Even those few who still opt for the criminal life do not feel bound by the rigid traditions of the past.

"These new guys just don't have it," says former FBI agent Pistone, whose testimony in various trials contributed to more than 200 indictments and 100 convictions. "When I was working undercover in the late Seventies, circulating among the Mob, you had the last of a generation that still respected the old values. Maybe their parents or relatives were born in Italy. They hardly ever left the neighborhood.

"Then came the yuppie generation. They don't speak Italian or care about the old country. Their whole attitude is, 'What can the Mob do for me?' They don't have any loyalty to anybody but themselves. Because people think like that, the Mob has no future."

Of course, even if the old order continues to wane, it will not happen quietly. The decline of the five families in New York has already brought about a high degree of anarchy. Last December, while Gotti was in jail awaiting trial, the Colombo family waged war among themselves during a bloody seven-day period. There were at least five shootings in Brooklyn restaurants and on the street, resulting in numerous injuries to innocent bystanders. "Right now [the Mob] has more of an incentive than ever to start whacking people," says the media star of Mob informants, Henry Hill, who is himself a tempting target.

One former mobster who is well aware of the organization's continued willingness to use violence is Peter Chiodo. His testimony against his former paesani in the Lucchese family brought mixed results. During his long convalescence from gunshot wounds and the stress of taking the witness stand, Chiodo shed more than 100 pounds. But Mafia hit men tried to murder his sister.

The shooting of Patricia Capozzalo, a mother of three and a PTA president at a local elementary school, was considered a major departure for the honored society. It violated an unwritten Mafia rule prohibiting the shooting of women and children and innocent family members. To some, it was further evidence of Cosa Nostra's fading code of honor, as well as its increasingly poor aim. Once again the hit men bungled the job. Capozzalo survived.

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On the streets of big cities all across America, the new world order has been asserting itself for years. Colombians control the importation of cocaine, doling it out to Jamaican and Dominican retailers. The Chinese oversee the heroin trade, in which Hispanic and black American gangs serve as distributors. Of today's gangsters, Jamaican posses and Vietnamese hoodlums are considered to be the most violent. The old paesano Mafia exists mostly in the movies.

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The new generation of gangsters presents a challenge to lawmen and journalists. Cosa Nostra had become a cottage industry, but its run is now probably ending. Exploring the new underworld will require added research and, most likely, a change of complexion on the block. Alone, white agents and investigators cannot do the job.

Privately, some cops and writers deride the new mobsters, citing the fact that their criminal reach does not compare with that of Cosa Nostra's. The old world mobsters, they contend, ran unions and industries. They had the power to corrupt cops and politicians and to compromise entire communities.

It is true that Vietnamese, Jamaican and other ethnic criminal groups do not have a criminal structure to approach that of Cosa Nostra's--a structure that took 50 or 60 years to reach its pinnacle. It's of little comfort, however, that these emerging groups see themselves as outsiders in American society. Traditional Mob protocol, which stated that cops and journalists could not be threatened or killed, was based partly on the Mob's identification with society at large. Many new crime groups, composed of impoverished and alienated immigrant youth, do not feel this identification, making wanton violence all the more likely.

One journalist who was willing to take on the new mobsters was Manuel de Dios Unanue. Born in Cuba, De Dios came to New York City in the early Seventies and became the crusading editor of El Diario-La Prensa, a New York City Spanish-language newspaper.

One of his targets was Hector Delgado, an Ecuadoran businessman and naturalized U.S. citizen who runs a string of travel agencies. In late 1990 Delgado was charged with running a money-laundering operation that funneled more than $200,000,000 to Colombian drug cartels and with making $22,000,000 in five years as his percentage--a profit margin that makes the Mafia's criminal rackets look like chump change. Delgado pleaded guilty to "structuring," circumventing a law requiring that a report be filed for cash transactions of $10,000 or more. He received probation and continues as a licensed money transmitter.

As the city's newspapers routinely speculated on who might be next to take over a Mafia crime family with a few hundred members, De Dios exposed a vast criminal network that the press had all but ignored. Even the police scarcely knew of the Nine Kings, a mysterious group of drug traffickers and money launderers who masquerade as businessmen. De Dios wrote about them.

Last March, De Dios was seated at the bar of a Spanish restaurant in Queens. Two gunmen walked into the restaurant. One pressed a gun to the back of De Dios' head and pulled the trigger twice. The job was not bungled.

The blatant murder of a journalist is a relatively new phenomenon in the American underworld. The message it delivers is clear. In the new world order, society will not be allowed the courtesies accorded by Cosa Nostra's quaint code of ethics, which supposedly left room for the concept of innocent victims. Whether or not mainstream journalists and lawmen have the moxie to face the new reality remains to be seen.

In the meantime, la Famiglia continues its decline from criminal reality to cultural myth.

The New Mob Third in a Series

"Forty years ago a kid considered the crime family a career. Today he's likely to think about St. John's."

"A gunman pressed a gun to De Dios' head and pulled the trigger twice. The job was not bungled."