Inside the American Mob

I was born and raised in Brooklyn.

From the time I was about four or five years old

I was introduced to the American mob through an uncle of mine.

I go to Manhattan, I meet this guy,

says, "Listen, you know what?

Johnny Dio says you owe him a favor.

You got to go to Miami.

Here, here's an address and here's a name.

And this is what he wants done."

And I look and I listen and I say, "Hey, no problem."

Couple days later I get on a plane,

I fly down to Miami Beach.

I meet another guy down there.

Guy says, "Come with me."

I drive over to a little garage,

he says, "Here's a key to that truck."

He says, "That's what you're gonna drive

when you go to this house."

He opens up a drawer and he says, "Now take this with you."

I look down, and it's a Sheffield knife.

He says, "And you know what you got to do."

A girl opens the door.

And I say, "Take me to the back!"

Get off! Get off!

He's at the pool.

He's a young guy, like 30-ish.

"Okay, let's go get him."

She goes to the back of the house,

opens the door, says, "John!"

I tie him to the pool table, and I sit her down,

I say, "You got to watch this."

She said, "What are you gonna do?"

Took the Sheffield knife,

stuck the knife under his testicles and sliced him.

She screamed, he yelled.

Went to back to New York and never talked about it.

And that's how wild and crazy the mob was in the '70s.

I'm laughing, I mean, I'm sure the guy didn't die,

and I'm sure we didn't sever his testicles,

but there was some blood on the pool table, and I left.

And that was the story.

In Brooklyn, a low-level mobster

is put to rest, shot dead in broad daylight.

Days later another reputed gangster snuffed out,

execution style.

Watch your head when you sit down.

Roll sound!

It seems incredible, but not so long ago in America,

a hidden empire of crime, violence and money

ruled large parts of this country.

These men are witnesses...

Sound speed.

...stepping forward now

to tell their story firsthand.

A few stay in the shadows for personal safety,

fearful of an organization

that most Americans know only as legend.

Its true name,

Cosa Nostra.

Lights.

How would you describe the Mafia?

What is the Mafia?

You know, what is the Mafia,

La Cosa Nostra, as we call it here in America?

Cosa Nostra is a cult.

It's a secret society.

It's a brotherhood among men.

Everything that they do is about making money illegally.

The Mafia is much more like a pack of rats

that eat anything in their path, including each other.

It is the most enduring, powerful and venal

organized criminal organization

to exist and to continue in America.

So in many ways,

you almost had a shadow government

that controlled huge amounts of economic activity

in a totally unaccountable way.

The golden age of the Mafia

was the beginning of the '70s,

when they had the strongest grip on legitimate business

in the United States of America.

In the 1970s they controlled trucking,

the ports, the garbage business,

and a lot of the meat, produce and fish markets.

Much of the building trade is in their hands.

The carpenters and electrical unions.

They have judges on their payroll

and police in their pockets.

No criminal organization

in the history of our country

has ever infiltrated legitimate institutions of society

the way the Mafia was able to do.

The bosses--untouchable.

They were sitting on thrones.

No one could remove them.

No one in law enforcement is gonna do anything to hurt them.

The FBI did not have the tools

to deal with a major criminal enterprise like that.

By 1970, law enforcement faces

an overwhelming challenge.

How do you take down a secret criminal organization

with such deep roots, so much power,

but so completely hidden from sight?

We were faced with a mammoth challenge.

And that was, how do you deal with this enterprise?

How do you actually have an impact on it?

That enterprise is divided into five families--

Genovese, Lucchese, Gambino, Bonanno, and Colombo.

Mr. Colombo, are you a boss of the Mafia?

No, I am not.

Is there a Mafia?

No, there is not.

But Joe Colombo is

lying with the confidence

of a man who believes he's untouchable.

There is a Mafia in 1970,

and he is one of

its most powerful members,

the boss of the most violent of the five families, the Colombos,

and a vicious killer in his own right.

In his 20s, he already was involved

in a minimum of 15 hits.

He was credited for at least

18 or more murders,

so he did a lot of work for the family,

a lot of work being killing people.

And Colombo presides over an army

of psychopathic killers.

Chief among them, this man,

one of his capos,

Crazy Joe Gallo.

He was a predatory hood.

He was good at breaking legs,

shooting people.

In the basement he kept a chained cub lion.

And the idea was he brought people down there

to show them that if they got him angry,

he might feed them to the lions.

But Gallo answers to the boss,

and that boss makes a big impression

on everyone who meets him.

How did you first meet Joe Colombo?

I met Joe Colombo as a kid.

He had a farm upstate that we would go to,

and I just knew him as Joey.

He was a dapper kind of dresser, and people respected him,

and he was just a nice guy.

So I met him at an early age, you know,

before I really realized who he was.

Let me tell you something...

Joe Colombo was a mixture of Old World and New.

Like other bosses of the five families,

he's a master of murder and corruption.

But unlike the rest, he's no immigrant.

He's a second generation Italian American,

born in the United States, and comfortable in the public eye.

He sees himself as a new generation of boss.

And he believes he's being harassed unfairly

because he's Italian American.

And he also sees a great opportunity

that he can become sort of a civil rights leader.

I thank God that I was born of Italian birth.

In 1970, he started the Italian American League,

which was supposed to be an organization that showed

that Italians were being discriminated against.

He begins attracting attention.

TV interviews, magazine interviews.

I had just come home from school,

and we got a phone call.

Joe Colombo's son, Joey Junior, got arrested.

We're gonna be picketing the FBI building.

I said, "Great. I'll be there."

Colombo, you know, was so incensed

that his son had been arrested on a federal charge

that they actually started picketing the FBI office

at 69th and 3rd in Manhattan.

We'd walk out of the office there and they'd call us names.

I had a rock thrown at me,

which just missed my head and bounced off a firebox.

Colombo and his legions take the fight

to the very doors of the enemy.

I start walking the line.

Some guys drive by in a car, and they yell out to me,

"You guinea," whatever they said, you know, something.

And a cop was standing there and he said,

"Hey, shut your mouth and get across the street."

And I got arrogant with him.

Before you know it, I've got a bunch of cops on top of me

and they're hitting me with the sticks.

They pick me up and put me in a paddy wagon.

Joey, I remember, as I'm bleeding, he puts his head in,

and he says, "Don't worry about it.

We got everything under control."

He said, "Just go with them, we'll take care of it."

You know, it was a tremendous impression,

'cause I saw the power that Joe Colombo had at that moment.

It was a good moment for me.

You've had a number of successes, haven't you?

For example, you've managed to get the Justice Department

to drop the word "Mafia" entirely.