Empires Of New York

new york city.

happy new year!

At the dawn of the 80s it was exploding with opportunity.

boom times. That's what the numbers signal today,

An economy that's on a roll in this country.

A place to seek money, power, fame.

Amid the glitz and greed, five titans seized their moment...

And by 1983, some were crossings lines that couldn't be uncrossed.

A mysterious trader had convinced the market

He was a magician, when in reality he was just a cheater.

boesky was blatantly violating the law with insider trading.

A poor girl from brooklyn had become the queen of hospitality

But her fairy tale would soon take a very dark turn.

she has become fortuitously cruel.

Leona helmsley forgot the most important lesson,

Which is you should keep your friends close and you keep your enemies closer.

A real estate showman had won his nasty battle with the city

And was preparing to make his biggest gamble yet.

yes!

donald trump has also ventured into gambling.

wall street was willing to give him

Whatever he wanted.

And as the new sheriff in town plotted the move that would launch him to stardom...

Giuliani cast himself as the law and order man of new york.

this is a great day for law enforcement

But this is a bad day, probably the worst, for the mafia.

A ruthless young capo made a move of his own.

One that would shake the mafia to its core.

her son, who was fresh in the ground when she said "I will destroy you."

he couldn't get out of his own way when it came to being cheap.

one more complaint... I close you up.

she was definitely a bitch and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense.

These five titans would reshape the city and the world we live in today.

And in 1983, nothing could stand in their way.

what a year it's been for music.

Top of the charts this week is "every breath you take" by the police.

boom times. That's what the numbers signaled today,

An economy that's on a roll in this country.

With the recent building boom, new york city skyline is ever changing,

And today a topping out ceremony was held at trump tower.

By 1983, the country's economic fortunes had rebounded

And for many the despair of the late 70s was starting to feel like a distant memory.

It seemed that maybe reagan had made america great again

And new york city was greatest of all.

you had people like ivan boesky all of a sudden

Making millions of dollars, going to lunch for thousands of dollars.

look at the shape of his head.

You ever seen a head shaped that way in your whole life?

parties with helicopters landing on boats.

And this was new money. This wasn't old money any more.

America's next generation of leaders, the "yuppies,"

What some people call the "y" word now, they're young urban professionals...

for yuppies. It's all about business. Capitalism is in.

The yuppie likes to go home, slap on his swatch,

Put on his reeboks, turn his socks inside out.

Then you put on a little bit fancy denim jean because you know,

You don't want to go out with your basic levis. How are you doing?

you were young, you were making money and were utterly unashamed about it.

We're going for the 80s.

We're going for the six figure. That's all we want.

new york had transformed into a playground built on money.

It was a playground all right, and not just for well dressed wall streeters.

In the shadows, another enormous industry was humming along.

Sucking in cash from almost every corner of the city.

when you do something as simple as this, the mob collects.

They've got a cut of the vending machine business.

Construction, the life blood of new york. It also gives transfusions of money

And power to organized crime and it goes on and on.

The garment industry, jewelry, automobile dealerships, that drink before dinner,

The dinner at a mob-controlled restaurant or just a pizza after the movie.

back in the 80s, if you were a new yorker you understood

That the mob was a very, very powerful force in the life of new york city.

Essentially, it was almost as if the mafia was a separate government that could tax

The citizens of new york for almost everything they bought.

builders, far from trying to oust the mob,

Depend on it to cut costly delays and red tape.

And what does super developer, donald trump believe?

I really don't know anything about it.

the mobs are making good money.

They're getting rich with the building boom, but then you have the normal rackets.

The mob, it's a multi-billion dollar a year enterprise.

Gambling, loan sharking, racketeering.

All tools of the trade for the five organized crime families.

It was about making money but it was also about power.

new york city had five organized crime families.

The bosses of the five families comprised what they called the new york commission.

With a group of the five leaders of the five families.

The bosses of the gambino, genovese, bonanno, colombo, and lucchese crime families.

those five family heads would literally meet on a regular basis

And plot out their empire

.As if they were businessmen, only their business was a criminal enterprise.

They divided up the city and divided up the different industries.

They were operating as a company.

Yet city officials and prosecutors seemed to be doing little or nothing about it

The city was crying out for someone to take a leadership role.

ruldoph giuliani is a man of many dimensions.

He loves listening to classical music and he loves listening to opera.

probably it's genetic. I think if you're italian

There has to be an interest in opera just as in your chromosomes.

Rudy giuliani was a remarkable crusading us attorney.

With an organized crime epidemic sweeping the city,

1983 proved the perfect time for a bold prosecutor to re-enter new york

And orchestrate his meteoric ascent sent to the top.

He did it by enforcing the rules although he didn't always play by them.

rudy giuliani came into office as us attorney

For the southern district in manhattan.

He was ruthlessly ambitious

And had higher office on his mind from an early age.

When he came here he had a lot of support in washington behind him.

He'd been a third ranking person in the justice department.

The number three job in washington, you're serving someone else.

The number one job in new york is much more high profile.

if you're coming into new york city in the early 80s,

You've got to be a little bit bold in terms of what you think you can do to help the city.

But you have to be even bolder if you're looking at it and say, "wait, what can this do for me?"

A question you hear increasingly now is, "who is rudolph giuliani? And what does he want?"

well, I'm the us attorney and what I want is to be as effective

As I can be as the united state's attorney.

Rudy, really presented himself as the answer to all of the villains of new york city

In the 1980s or you know, name your mobster.

Hopefully with an organization like the mafia, we will wear them down.

According to rudy, his father's hate for the mafia was why rudy became such a mafia fighter.

Growing up, rudy's father had made it clear to him

That the opportunities for italian americans

Had been limited in this country because of their image.

Italian americans had gotten a bad rap and that this was in large part because of the mob

These are extremely dangerous individuals.

They are people who destroyed the lives of other human beings.

rudy giuliani was this seemingly incorruptible straight arrow,

Boy scout, eagle scout. He was trying be one of the untouchables.

He was a little bit of a nerd.

he saw himself as the enforcer of morality.

That came from the upbringing and a catholic household and catholic schools.

And at one point he wanted to be a priest.

And it wasn't until he was a sophomore in college that he gave up on that, decided,

"maybe the celibacy thing isn't for me."

But he never really lost that sense of moral crusade.

I think he liked the mafia in some ways.

It was a great target 'cause what can you say positive

About the mafia? And he was gonna save the country from the mafia.

Rudy giuliani explained to me his vision of putting together a case

Against the entire mafia commission as an enterprise.

There was something on the books called the rico statute. Under the rico umbrella,

You could convict a whole family infrastructure

Of conspiring together as an organized crime family.

And so rudy's idea was,

"why don't we do that against the commission as if it is a distinct enterprise

And conspiracy that we can prosecute under the racketeering law.

It seemed like an audacious, very interesting plan. I was excited to work on it.

The eastern district in new york and brooklyn and rudy giuliani were supposed to share this case

But rudy went to washington and he said,

"I'm the guy who's really equipped to do this. I should be put in charge."

His mentor in washington, the attorney general, made it happen.

Rudy's agenda was rudy

And what was driving him was what rudy was doing and his relentless climb.

Rudy didn't care whose toes he's stepping on, he wanted to be at the top and he wanted fame.

He would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.

The stage was set for an epic new york show down. Having eliminated his competition,

The young prosecutor prepared to take on the mob.

He knew that the headlines would be sensational.

And that if he succeeded... He wouldn't have to share them with anyone.

it took four years and 300 million to build and toda

Can celebrate with the opening of trump tower.

as part of the nikki haskell show,

I filmed the opening of the trump tower.

It was an amazing place. It was so opulent, so chic...

...It was more than anybody had seen in the city before.

Everyone knows steve rebel, a man that created night life in new york.

- how are you? - Hi honey.

- Good. How are you? - Welcome to the trump towers.

Yeah. It's beautiful isn't it?

you walk into it. It has this huge marble atrium.

And it has this giant waterfall, and it makes you sort of feel in awe,

The way cathedrals do in europe.

And it's this monument to glittering wealth.

I think we're in for a hot time if this is any indication of the 80s.

Trump tower was the epitome right at that moment in time

Of what it meant to be wealthy in the united states.

donald trump was able to capture this moment where he defined luxury.

The trump tower got so much publicity.

trump tower is a major draw for tourists,

With apartments selling for up to $10 million.

And in the middle of it was donald trump.

Rewarded for his vision and praised for his ambition,

The new titan of real estate had arrived and image trumped all.

The more he flaunted his wealth and status, the more the city revered him.

as long as this building stands,

There will probably be some who will refer to trump tower

As the house that tax abatements built.

But that's kind of a ground floor look at this building.

If you look a little bit higher, you'll see another story.

A story of entrepreneurial vision, huge capital investment and sheer guts.

He made his reputation on this. Helping donald create a mythology around himself.

I always like going first class. Trump tower is the ultimate in first class

And that's why it's been successful.

Everything was classy, this was very high class and this one has class and that one has class

And you know, this looks like class.

It was a big deal to him. He had class on the brain.

But the finishes in the apartments were...

Really crap, excuse the expression.