Story of the Day-THE MOB PLOT TO KILL RUDY GIULIANI

FBI Agent: Mob Discussed Killing Giuliani
Mafia Bosses John Gotti and Carmine Persico Suggested Killing Giuliani in 1986 but Other Mob Bosses Rejected the Idea
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=3772253&page=1

Rudy Giuliani was targeted by the bosses of New York's five mob families, who considered killing him in 1986, an informant told the FBI at the time, according to testimony given in the murder trial of retired FBI agent Lindley DeVechio.

Late Gambino family crime boss John Gotti, the flamboyant "Dapper Don," and the Colombo family boss Carmine Persico, suggested the idea of killing Giuliani, who as Manhattan U.S. attorney led the government's prosecution of the mob. But bosses for the other families -- Bonnano, Lucchese and Genovese -- disagreed and the idea was rejected, according to the informer.


The FBI was informed of the purported plot by Gregory Scarpa Sr., a captain in the Colombo family, according to testimony given Wednesday afternoon by FBI agent William Bolinder in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. The information was included in a September 1987 debriefing report filed by DeVecchio, who was Scarpa's handler in the FBI. Bolinder discussed the report while describing the contents of the agency's file on Scarpa, who died in prison of AIDS complications in 1994.

Sitting in court under a neon red-and-blue light that depicted the scales of justice, Bolinder testified as a prosecution witness in the DeVecchio trial. Prosecutors claimed that DeVecchio was a rogue agent who supplied Scarpa with inside information, which the mobster used to plot several murders.

The mob bosses had plenty of reasons to target Giuliani, considering his staff had prosecuted four of the five mob bosses. In October 1986, Persico, Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo and Genovese street boss Anthony Salerno were convicted during the Commission trial, so named for the "Commission," a loose affiliation of New York mob operations. The case against Bonnano boss Philip Rastelli was dismissed and Gambino boss Paul Castellano was gunned down and killed outside Sparks Steakhouse in Manhattan in December 1985.

During a break in the testimony, Judge Gustin Reichbach asked Bolinder about a notorious story that Scarpa was recruited by the FBI in 1964 to intimidate a Ku Klux Klansman into giving up information about the "Mississippi Burning" murders of three civil-rights workers.


Bolinder said there was "some vague reference to Scarpa going to Mississippi" in the mafioso's file. He added that there was "mention of an investigation down South but no document specifically relating to that."





Mob Targeted Rudy Giuliani For Hit
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,304982,00.html
"Dapper Don" John Gotti, the late head of the Gambino crime family, and Colombo family boss Carmine Persico in 1986 mulled the idea of snuffing out then-Manhattan U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to testimony given Wednesday during the murder trial of a retired FBI agent.

Giuliani, now the Republican presidential frontrunner, at the time headed the federal government's prosecution of the mob. But the other three chiefs of New York's five mob families — Bonnano, Lucchese and Genovese — rejected the plan, according to an FBI agent who testified Wednesday in the murder trial against a retired agent, The New York Post reports.

During the trial, FBI agent William Bolinder, testifying for the prosecution, offered as evidence a memo by mob informant Gregory Scarpa Sr. given to his FBI handler Lindley DeVecchio in 1987.

"On Sept. 17, 1987, sources advised that recent information disclosed that approximately a year ago all five NY LCN (La Cosa Nostra) families discussed the idea of killing USA (United States Attorney) Rudy Giuliani and John Gotti and Carmine Persico were in favor of the hit," the memo reads.

DeVecchio, who headed the task force aimed at bringing down the New York mafia, was arrested in March 2006 and accused of supplying Scarpa with inside information that was used by to plan several murders.

Giuliani was undoubtedly an attractive target for the mob, since his staff had prosecuted four of the five mob bosses, including Persico, Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo and Genovese street boss Anthony Salerno, all convicted in October 1986.

Bonnano boss Philip Rastelli had his case dismissed. Gambino boss Paul Castellano was arrested in 1985 and was on bail when he was assassinated outside Sparks Steakhouse in Manhattan, on Gotti's orders.

Giuliani told FOX News' Sean Hannity last week that he was aware of the proposed hit.

"Toward the end of all of the work I did as U.S. attorney, prosecuting hundreds of Mafia members, all sorts of drug dealers, whatever, another organized criminal put out a contract on me," he said.



INSIDE THE MOB PLOT TO KILL RUDY GIULIANI
5 MAFIA BOSSES ALMOST SANCTIONED HIT
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10252007/news/regionalnews/inside_the_mob_plot_to_kill_ru.htm
The bosses of New York's five Mafia families in the mid-1980s came a hair-trigger away from sanctioning a hit on then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, according to bombshell FBI records made public yesterday.

The mob bosses decided by a 3-to-2 margin not to try to whack the future mayor and presidential candidate. But before cooler heads prevailed, at least two of the dons argued fervently that the mob-busting U.S. attorney should sleep with the fishes.
Bonanno boss Philip "Rusty" Rastelli, Genovese chief Vincent "The Chin" Gigante and Luchese honcho Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo all cast votes to spare the headline-grabbing prosecutor, the documents show.

But the young guns of the bunch, Gambino boss John "The Teflon Don" Gotti and Colombo chief Carmine "The Snake" Persico, were said to lobby in favor of the murder.

The news surfaced on day six of the blockbuster trial of former FBI supervisor Lindley DeVecchio, who faces life in prison for allegedly orchestrating four gangland rubouts by leaking inside information to his own informant, Colombo soldier Gregory "The Grim Reaper" Scarpa.

DeVecchio's lawyers entered into evidence Scarpa's 600-page informant file, compiled of tips, reports and suggestions received between 1980 and 1992, none more compelling than the note detailing the Giuliani discussions.

"On Sept. 17, 1987, sources advised that recent information disclosed that approximately a year ago all five NY LCN [La Cosa Nostra] families discussed the idea of killing USA [United States Attorney] Rudy Giuliani and John Gotti and Carmine Persico were in favor of the hit," the Scarpa memo reads.


"The bosses of the Luchese, Bonanno and Genovese families rejected the idea, despite strong efforts to convince them otherwise by Gotti and Persico."

While the memo makes clear that all five bosses were in on the decision, it's not likely they met in person to discuss it. Depending on the exact date of the meeting, which Scarpa put at sometime in 1986, as many as three were behind bars at the time.

And it's doubtful that Gigante, who for years hid behind pretend boss Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, would have taken part in discussions with the other families.

Word that Persico went ahead on his own despite the vote surfaced in 2004.

But yesterday's revelations from the FBI files are the first to suggest that the issue was ever put before all five families.

Giuliani declined to comment. But last week, he appeared to reference the Persico affair in a talk with radio host Sean Hannity.

"Toward the end of all of the work I did as U.S. attorney, prosecuting hundreds of Mafia members, all sorts of drug dealers, whatever, another organized criminal put out a contract on me," he said.

The hit summit would have been about when Giuliani made headlines with the "Commission" case - a major mob prosecution that put Persico away, among others, away for 100 years.

Skeptical prosecutors cautioned that nearly every word in Scarpa's file was written by DeVecchio, a dirty agent they say had everything to gain by pumping up the information provided by his source.

A separate memo names an NYPD detective assigned to the Brooklyn DA's office as a longtime seller of police info to the Colombos and Gambinos.

The report notes only a last name, "Capobianco." Sources confirmed that a Detective John Capobianco was assigned to the squad of then-DA Elizabeth Holtzman in the 1980s.

Capobianco, contacted at his home in Brooklyn, denied the snitch's allegation.

"That's bull- - - -," he said. "I remember Scarpa. We locked him up. Sold information? No way, pal."



Giuliani: Mob Buff, Buster
Candidate's fascination provides a glimpse into his career path
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20692605/

NEW YORK - Rudy Giuliani clearly has a love/hate thing when it comes to the Mafia: celebrates the fictional characters, incarcerates the felonious ones, keeps mum about those in his own family tree.

The former federal prosecutor is both film buff and mob buster, still breaking out his raspy Don Corleone impression and quoting lines from "The Godfather" more than two decades after busting up the New York mob's ruling hierarchy.

But Giuliani spent a lot more time - he once estimated 4,000 hours - listening to the bugged conversations of real Mafiosi than channeling Marlon Brando's chipmunk-cheeked boss. And long before anyone heard of Tony Soprano (yes, Rudy's a fan), Giuliani was jailing "Fat Tony" Salerno after the 1986 "Commission" trial.

Giuliani's mob fascination - including a reported link in his own family - has already surfaced during the presidential campaign, although few expect much political fallout from the occasional "Godfather" parody. But it provides a glimpse into his career path from prosecutor to mayor to presidential candidate.

When he arrived as U.S. attorney in 1983, the chance to take on the mob was an offer Giuliani could not refuse.

While many Italian-American public figures avoided the word "Mafia," saying it reinforced stereotypes, Giuliani used it repeatedly at news conferences. "By using the word Mafia correctly," he insisted, "you actually help to end the unfair stereotype."

The 'pizza connection'
Giuliani's prosecutorial zeal led an attorney for Genovese boss Salerno to charge that Giuliani had "made it his personal mission to bury my client."

Giuliani, uncharacteristically, replied with a no comment.

In addition to the "Commission" case, where the heads of New York's five Mafia families were indicted, Giuliani made his prosecutorial bones with the "Pizza Connection" case - a mob-bankrolled plan to import $1.6 billion in heroin through pizzerias.

The former two-term mayor's interest in the mob, as either movie patron or prosecutor, is unlikely to impact his presidential candidacy, said one political analyst. Voters are more likely to focus on his performance after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or his three marriages and the resultant fallout.

"The positive for Giuliani is 9/11," said pollster Maurice Carroll of Quinnipiac University. "The negative is the personal stuff."

The family
A 2000 investigative biography revealed that Giuliani's love/hate deal with the Mafia included his own family: His father and uncle had Mafia ties. Uncle Leo D'Avanzo ran a loan-sharking and gambling operation out of a Brooklyn bar, and used his father Harold as muscle to collect unpaid debts, author Wayne Barrett reported.

According to the book, the two were involved in a shootout with a member of the mob on a Brooklyn street in the early 1960s over a loan-sharking dispute. D'Avanzo was partnered with a made man, Jimmy Dano, in their illegal business, Barrett wrote in "Rudy!"

Giuliani did not dispute the book's claims, but said: "I'm not going to read it, I'm not going to comment about it."

The book said Giuliani's cousin Lewis D'Avanzo was a mob associate who ran a major car theft ring. It also says the FBI suspected that D'Avanzo - who went to school with Giuliani and attended the mayor's first wedding - was involved in several murders.

D'Avanzo was killed in Brooklyn by FBI agents in 1977 when he tried to run down an agent who had stopped him on a warrant for transporting 100 stolen luxury cars.

Among the book's claims is that the mayor's father spent a year and a half in Sing Sing prison for robbing a milkman at gunpoint in the 1930s - a decade before Rudy Giuliani was born.

But Carroll said that issue wouldn't play nationally.

"If anybody is discouraged for voting for Giuliani because they think of the mob, I think they should be locked up - for pure idiocy," he said

Playing to the mob
Giuliani has long expressed his admiration for Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning films on the fictional Corleone crime family. On New Year's Eve 1997, Giuliani screened "The Godfather" for 1,500 well-wishers gathered before his second-term mayoral inauguration.

Giuliani even cited the film as a blueprint for prosecutors.

"'The Godfather' is my favorite movie," Giuliani said at the time. "I watched the movie back in the '70s and probably it helped me a lot, in a lot of the plans that we put together for how to dismantle the five families in New York."

He later became a booster of "The Sopranos," the hit HBO series about a New Jersey-based mob family. "It's just a show," he said when Italian-American groups criticized the program for perpetuating ethnic stereotypes.

Giuliani's "Godfather" schtick has prompted similar complaints.

At an annual event put on by New York reporters in 2001, the then-mayor appeared as the cigar-chomping "Don Giuliani," accompanied by cast members from "The Sopranos." He reprised his bit solo at the 2004 Gridiron Dinner in Washington.

And he opened a California campaign speech this year in his Corleone voice; in April, he invoked a mob axiom in explaining why reporters should take it easy on his wife, Judith.

"She's a civilian, to use the old Mafia distinction," he said.

Not a laughing matter
Giuliani has had to deal with another mob-related entanglement involving his former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, whom he recommended to be the nation's homeland security chief. Kerik pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor for accepting gifts from a company reputedly linked to organized crime.

Giuliani's ventures into mob-speak are an issue that Italian-American groups have complained about to the candidate, said Dona De Sanctis, deputy executive director of the Order Sons of Italy in America.
"If Mr. Giuliani continued to do his Don Corleone imitation, that would offend and annoy a large number of Italian-Americans," she said. "We would prefer no jokes, please. It's not a laughing matter to us."

A Giuliani spokeswoman responded that he was "proud of his Italian heritage and has a record celebrating the country's culture and the important contributions Italian-American have made."

That group could include actor Tony Sirico, who played the menacing Paulie Walnuts on "The Sopranos" and recently endorsed Giuliani.

"I love him," said Sirico. "Ya hear what I said? I love him."

Anybody got a problem with that?