[Music] now [Applause] [Applause] [Music] August the 14th 1981 New York City Dominic Sunny black Napolitano a captain in the banano crime family walks into the motion Lounge Bar in Brooklyn he hands the bman the keys to his apartment a large bundle of cash and the diamond encrusted rings from his fingers he tells the barman he's going to a meeting and doesn't know if he's coming [Music] back he is driven across town to a house in stat Island the meeting is in the basement Sunny black was killed because he had brought a spy Donnie Brasco into
the inner sanctum of the mafia he was really special agent Joe pistone did I want to see him get killed no would I rather have him gone to jail [Music] yeah thanks to pistone's 6 years undercover over 200 Mobsters will be [Music] convicted and one of the biggest mafia families brought [Music] down it was the most successful under cover operation in FBI [Music] history but the operation that would one day bring down the mafia would start on a far smaller scale in 1976 New York was facing a wave of truck hijackings [Music] these loads are
sometimes worth2 $300,000 and the the mob guys would uh hijack the truck stick the truck up take it and then uh sell it to fences the FBI decided to initiate an undercover operation to Target these fences in an effort to stem the flow of hijackings they selected Joe pistone for the operation pistone had racked up extensive undercover experience over his 15 years as an FBI agent I always worked undercover cases I worked uh all criminal matters bank robberies prostitution cases worked a lot of gambling cases pistone had grown up in an Italian-American family in Patterson
New Jersey and knew well the sort of people he might encounter undercover growing up in a neighborhood you always know who the mob guys are in the neighborhood but you know my family situation was you know you keep away from those guys you know don't get involved with them to get to the fences the FBI created a cover for his Stone a jewel thief we came up with burglar and jewelrey because when you're in an undercover situation uh you can't become involved in any violence Crime Of Violence so you come up with a legend that
uh doesn't tend to lead toward violence not many Jewel thieves in in in jail for murder you know so I went to school learned learned all about jewelry precious gems the locks alarms saes so we took about 6 7 months to prepare for this operation with his training complete pistone was ready to embark on his [Music] mission in 1976 he left FBI headquarters with a new ID as Donnie Brasco unaware he would not return for over 6 years [Music] [Music] now his job was to find a way to infiltrate the hijackers you don't just walk
into a place and say hey I'm Donnie Brasco J if I want to start doing business with you doesn't work that way pistone had moved from his home in New Jersey leaving his wife and children behind and rented an apartment in Manhattan the plan was we had certain bars and restaurants that we knew these guys hung out in and the idea was for me to uh frequent these places and get my face seen get known and hopefully uh become in in engag in conversation [Music] it would take many months until people trusted the new face
as a local well the first 6 months I would just hit these different restaurants somewhere in the upper Eide somewh down in uh little ly I mean they were basically uh all in [Applause] Manhattan I would just frequent to go in uh sit at the bar order a meal at the bar order a drink at the bar and just hang around for a couple [Music] hours you can't uh form a pattern you can't go into the same place the same day at the same time it's not a 9 to-5 job it's not a 5day a
week job it's a 7day a week job [Music] for pistone it was slow and repetitive work did I enjoy it I endured it I put it that way I endured it I'm not really a bar guy I don't drink I mean you know I'll drink one one beer maybe one glass of wine I wasn't in love with being an undercover agent to me it was part of my job [Music] finally after 6 months of targeting the bars of Manhattan pistone thought that his face had become familiar enough and he decided to try his luck with
a ban whom he suspected had criminal [Music] connections I finally F Well I got to make a move here where you come in one night hey Donnie how you doing uh okay let me start talking and uh I a package of diamonds and I said uh I need x amount of money for these say $10,000 as another cover you got to know what the street price of stuff is we call swag you know difference of buying these diamonds at Tiffany than buying off somebody in the street and he didn't say a word he just picked
it up put in his [Music] pocket days passed and despite regular visits back to the bar the package was never mentioned by the ban or by the man he knew as Donny [Music] Brasco but a fortnite later there's a breakthrough after about 2 weeks I come in one night he said somebody left this for you it's an envelope I pick it up and the money's in there it was the payment for the jewels this was the first important step in establishing pistone's credibility as the criminal Donny Brasco now he knows it you know I mean
I don't have to spell it out to him that I'm a jewelty you know and that's it went from there over the next few months the Barm man started to invite Donnie out introducing him to numerous contacts the places we went to were all after hours joints you know gambling after hours and he would introduce me you know just as Donnie pistone was being introduced as Donnie Brasco to all sorts of shadowy people but one introduction in particular will become very significant the man was known as Jil and was not only a fence and a
truck hijacker but was what the mob called a made guy made straightened out good fellow wise guy all those terms mean the same thing you've been officially inducted into a particular uh Mafia family now news that was directly involved with a maid Mafia member changed the entire nature of the operation the FBI seized the opportunity and encouraged pistone to get in with Jilly and his [Music] crew pistone used all that he had learned at the FBI to convince them that he was a jewel thief but they wanted to see The Spoils of his crimes you
have to be an earner you know they're not taking me in because they like my looks you know they have to see that had the ability to to make money suddenly pistone needed to get hold of a lot more jewelry from his supposed robberies in the operation as a jewel thief I mean I wasn't going out robbing Robin Tiffy to get the jewels any jewelry that I brought around uh came from the FBI it was confiscated jewelry uh that we got from US Customs uh you know there was jewelry that was confiscated other times I
would bring around watches as pistone began handing over more and more jewelry it seemed that he was convincing them that he was a genuine Thief but then some of the gang members started asking for his help in their own robberies breaking into homes something he was reluctant to do as an FBI agent they ask me you know well can you get by this alarm can you get in you know and uh a couple times I said no I can't bypass that alarm system uh I can't you know I can't I can't get into this place
I can't do the this safe and they got mad pistone was called to a meeting by Jilly at his club with two other gangsters Frankie and [Music] paty they locked them door py puts his gun on the table and he said you know Donnie said let you convince me that you're a really great jewel thief he said the only way you're going out of here is rolled up in that rug they began to question pistone on every detail of his past where you from who did you know what' you do the questioning continued for 5
hours eventually Jil convinced by pistone's performance called a halt to the meeting but then as Frankie and py were backing down pistone took a massive gamble to increase his credibility when somebody calls you out on the street you got to be mad and the only thing they're going to understand here is some kind of [Music] force so I hit [Applause] Frankie as he jumps on me he starts punching me starts beating me well I can't do anything because he's a m guy you can't hit him made guy that's penalty to death so I just keep
hitting Frankie that finally break it up the fight didn't just make him seem a credible gangster but it also gave pistone the excuse to distance himself from the increasing violence of jil's crew I went to Jill and I said Jil you know all due respect but I don't want to be involved with these guys anymore uh if they have something lined up they have a score lined up they have something they they want to Rob lined up don't even tell me about it believing pistone was the real deal Jill introduced him to some major figures
from another Mafia Family the bananos first he met Tony miror [Music] Tony miror was a major drug dealer one mean guy he he he was the type of guy he just abused everybody but he he made tons of money for the family through you know through his drug dealing and mirror introduced him to Lefty rerio a Hitman who had reputed 23 killings to his name Lefty rerio was what I would call 24-Hour gangster he was on being a gangster every minute of the day but Lefty rerio had a trait that was invaluable for pistone's operation
he was a great historian as far as knowledge of the of the mafia how it worked and how it would work and uh I gained a lot of valuable information uh from [Music] him through mirror and rerio pistone was able to shine a torch on the inner workings of a Mafia Family something that the FBI until then had known surprisingly little about he could recount to us who was in who was out he could recount what rackets they were involved in he could recount what's coming up in the future the people he was involved in
were particularly vicious you know who was going to kill who or who was on the outs in 1978 the operation had a major breakthrough Tony miror was jailed for drug trafficking and Lefty rerio seized an opportunity to cash in on pistone's skill as a good earner and made him an offer he couldn't refuse pistone would operate exclusively under Lefty as his partner he would now be much more closely involved in bonano family business and critically Lefty was part of a crew run by one of the most powerful captains in the banano family Dominic Sunny black
Napolitano Sunny black was an effective important leader a capao he had about 15 to 20 members in his uh crew about 10 or 12 made guys and probably at least 20 or 30 other well known as Associates of wannabes will hang around and work with the family he dressed effectively like the consumate or quintessential mobster t-shirts dark shoot dark suits uh heavy on jewelry rings pinky rings a swagged uh talk tough pistone was now hanging out daily with sunny black at his social club the motion Lounge in Brooklyn the average day in the life of
a wise guy is uh not as exciting as you might think you know you might meet up at 10: 11:00 in the morning you hang out at the social club all day and you know your conversation is about what you're going to rob what you're going to steal who's stealing from you how much money you're making in this operation how much money you're making in that operation it's a steady grind every day thanks to pistone the FBI were in a position they had never anticipated they had an agent as an active member in a major
crew in the New York mafia there was a lot of excitement because after this Point nobody had infiltrated to the point uh that they were running around with made guys and in any family pistone was now even better placed to gather material on a wide range of Mafia activities at this stage I was gathering uh a lot of uh uh intelligence information drug deals extortion hijacking political corruption politicians law enforcement people that were corrupt uh so it was a mirror of of of information but more than that by working with Lefty he was able to
learn who the major players were in the bonano family and other New York families giving the FBI names of captains and bosses I was finding out who the upper echelons the structur the family who was basically running the family so a lot of it had to do with intelligence information that we didn't know by doing investigations and uh that we weren't getting from informant we showed we can go after and get the upper on versus you know versus the guys on the bottom doing all the Dirty Work pistone's intelligence was helping the FBI build a
much clearer picture of not just how the bonano family was run but the whole Mafia [Music] and what emerged was how much the various mafia families were in fact cooperating with each other you came to realize that this was not a monolithic organization these these folks were working together these they were might have been individual families that you know for work purposes and for power purposes but in the scheme of things they were working together uh sharing these criminal activities and pistone's success was not limited to just the mafia in New York with his strong
credibility he could now vouch for other undercover agents and instigate connections with other mafia families as far away as Los Angeles in Milwaukee he was so successful he even managed to set up a face to-face meeting with the mob boss there the first time an FBI agent had sat down with such a high ranking mob [Music] in Florida also the FBI had been attempting to infiltrate the mafia they had set up a club the king's court which they had hoped would be a beacon for Florida's [Music] Mobsters pistone saw a way to help the operation
by suggesting that Sunny black become a partner in the club the idea appealed to Sunny and he sent pistone and Lefty to Florida to check it out pistone now discovered that like many city-wise guys Lefty had hardly ever left his New York Bar everybody thinks that Mom guys are so worldly and they know everything I mean they're really parochial and Lefty was no different uh you know had no idea how to make a plane reservation you know because a lot of most of the time when they wanted to go somewhere the plane tickets were you
know back in in the day before the computers it was all they were stolen you know from from travel [Music] [Music] agents when Lefty saw the club he reported favorably back to Sunny and sunny liked what he heard but to operate in Florida sunny black would still need the permission of the local Mafia headed by Santo trafficante that's when Sunny then starts moving ahead to get a meeting with trafficante sunny flew to Miami to meet the Florida boss to propose running illegal gambling operations together from the club trafficante agreed to the deal it was a
breathtaking achievement for the FBI here we got two major bosses that we married up together to become involved in illegal activities with I mean unheard of so let's uh uh that was a big thing the FBI had the back office of the king's court fully installed with microphones and cameras the king's court was wired for audio and video but it was only in the office not the club because the patrons were regular people who didn't know it was an FBI [Music] operation pistone and other undercover agents started to Stage drug deals with Mafia Mobsters there
it was a gold M of intelligence for the FBI but for the bonanos it was a major money-making [Music] operation and sunny black loved it every time he went to Club it was packed I mean it was a big hit among the locals you know and everybody that in there was was a citizen you know so the club was making money we're doing illegal gambling casino nights and illegal bingo games which was big down here because of the elderly population uh you can make a lot of money running Bingo because they were taking the the
big cut for them pistone was impressing Sunny black so much so that Sunny asked him to head up the operation in Florida but more importantly for the FBI in another promotion for pistone he no longer had to report to Lefty rerio but would answer directly to Sunny black pistone now had access to one of the most important captains in the New York mafia nothing like this had ever been done [Music] before now based in Florida on trips back to New York pistone would even stay at Sunny's house and they would spend hours feeding Sunny's racing
pigeons on his roof I got to know Sunny black pretty good and uh although he you know although he was a stone cold killer and a gangster uh Sunny was the kind of guy you could spend time with I mean you know he would talk about the gambling the drugs he would talk about you know who's the power in the family or but you could also have other conversations with [Music] him he loved those pigeons you know like I said we go up every morning and he'd feed them and change their water and give me
a give me a history lessons on pigeons I mean I never listened to it but I had told the FBI guys when those pigeon cops come down you can say goodbye to Sunny black you know he's [Music] gone pistone's close relationship with sunny black now gave him even more access to information within the map he discovered that one faction of the banano family recent Sicilian immigrants known as Zips were enormous drug importers they used a series of pizza restaurants to distribute the drugs the Zips were Sicilians brought over to run the pizza shops that they
had all over the New York and Pennsylvania not only to distribute the heroin but to use these Zips for murders and anything else that they needed from them based on pistone's information the FBI launched a major investigation into the Zip's pizza restaurant drug trade but they couldn't act on it immediately because if pistone's identity were revealed to the mafia he would be killed [Music] instantly every day going to work like that knowing he could could easily be made or betrayed and his life would have been worthless and yet he did it for years as long
as the person's undercover you can't do anything with that information until they they surface or you jeopardize them but in fact by now there was a far more serious threat to pistone's Life Tony mirror pistone's first Contact act in the mafia was released from jail and Furious that Bastone was earning money from Sunny black and Lefty he wanted Revenge we have to remember there's a lot of jealousy and envy in the mob miror gets out of jail and he's jealous because he thinks I'm making a lot of money and because I'm I'm real close to
Sunny black so he goes and uh he goes to his captain and says that I should be with him and not Lefty because he's the one that brought me around but Sunny Keen to keep his cut of pistone's earnings was reluctant to pass him back to mirror mirror goes to Sunny and sunny says no no huh mirror then took his complaint to Stage further and call for the other capos to arbitrate the decision Lefty and sunny were called on to defend their claim on pistone in a series of meetings Lefty would phone pistone after each
one to let him know what was happening and pistone would secretly record their conversations hey Donnie let me tell you something I had a 4 and 1 half hour meeting about you today for what Donnie don't say for what left you know you you say don't say for a while how do I know I don't even know what you're talking about I won you and I'm going to keep you well that's right right I'm not giving you up it's so Sunny we we own Donnie and we giving up Rocky now you give up my prick
I says I warn you I'm not giving you up I die with you well how does Sunny stand tonight with us what did he stand he's not giving you up not giving you up ain't nobody having you he I don't want no point of mirror Sunny black and Lefty one and got to keep pone as their own but mirror wasn't finished yet and in an act of Revenge he would do something that would instantly threaten pistone's life so he figures well if I can't have him nobody's going to have him so then what the Mira
does is uh he puts in the beef with all the captains that I stole $250,000 uh in a drug deal and uh you know that's a no no you don't steal money from the family the severity of the accusations demanded a series of high level meetings or sitd Downs a sitdown was in effect a trial high-ranking Mobsters from the banano family in New York including some of the Sicilian Zips and bananos from far away as Canada were called in to judge the accusations leveled at pistone if pistone were found guilty he would be executed immediately
if you lose a sit down they're not going to you're going to get killed right then I mean it's not like you know they're going to give you you know we're going to give you a month to get your Affairs in order Rocky admitted that you made $250,000 who did Rocky tell he Mar his men don't you he's a lion shut up he's a lion shut up he's lying left I give [ __ ] he's a liar I never cut any junk money up with him don't [ __ ] count why do this guy want
to you know he want you bad so what do we do now I don't give a [ __ ] but you can't afraid of anybody you can't help me out I have to handle it without you and I ain't afraid of mirror either when's this thing all going to end with this it ain't going to [Applause] end Sunny spent 3 hours fighting for Donnie eventually his life was spared Sunny black wins to sit down pistone may have survived the sitdown but he had made a serious enemy of Tony mirror the FBI were concerned the operation
was becoming too dangerous and began to consider pulling pistone out they were talking about closing operation down but pastone thought otherwise and managed to convince his boss Jules balante to continue just a little while longer I convince jewes there's nothing to worry about you know I mean I I I can handle [Music] this by the end of 1980 FBI agent Joe pistone had been undercover in the mafia for nearly 5 years [Music] years his intelligence had been invaluable to the FBI they had wir Taps on senior members of the New York mafia cases open on
Sicilian heroin trafficking the Milwaukee mob and Colombian drug deals in Florida and as a trusted Confidant to one of the most powerful captains in the New York mafia the outlook for pistone and the FBI was looking [Music] good but soon pistone's operation was to become far more [Music] complicated in Florida a Las Vegas night was planned for the king's court an illegal gambling evening with craps roulette wheels and [Music] blackjack the event was scheduled for January the 17th 1981 sunny and a number of New York Wise Guys had flown down for the [Music] event the
local sheriff had been paid to turn a blind eye I was right there when he paid the guy off the guy assured us that everything was taken care of you know at first the evening went well place was mobbed King's Court was mobbed had all kind of money um I mean making all kind of money but when the night was in full swing something went terribly [Music] wrong the club was raided by the local [Music] police and sunny who refused to provide identification was taken to jail [Music] he was bailed the following day but was
Furious Sunny spent that night in in a can he wasn't too happy the next day believe me wasn't too happy the next day sunny black was convinced there must have been a rat pistone had to be concerned that suspicion might fall on him [Music] but as the crew flew back to New York there was further cause for [Music] concern months earlier in a move to impress his mob Connections in Florida pistone had borrowed a luxury boat from the FBI for a fishing trip with Lefty but now Lefty spotted an article in a magazine deta ing
an FBI sting operation in which agents had posed as Arab shakes to entrap corrupt [Music] congressmen the article included a picture of a boat used in the operation it was the same boat that pistone had used to impress Lefty rerio the boat that we used was on a front page of U Newsweek another major undercover operation going called abcam and wasn't supposed to get the surfac for a long time uh but what happened to us is it it got exposed Lefty demanded to know how Donnie had got hold of an FBI boat I told Lefty
remember this girl we met out in San Diego and you know do you remember she said her brother had a boat in in Miami and that we can use it any time so I said look left I said you were there you know uh even if it even if it is a government boat they were after you know they're after the politicians they they weren't after us they never came after us so I got away with that [Music] one Lefty seemed to buy his story but pastone could not be sure he was still completely trusted
by either lefty or sunny but then any doubts he might have had disappeared when pistone was given an astonishing vote of confidence from Sunny black Sunny black proposed pistone for full membership of the the mafia he had to go to Every captain in the family and and say hey I'm going to propose Donnie Brasco you guys have anything against Donnie and if one Captain says a negative thing they can't propose you and all the other captains okay [Music] did as a made man it will be like a letter of introduction to some of the most
powerful Mobsters in America pistone would have much greater access to other parts of the mafia and some of the most closely guarded [Music] Secrets but at FBI headquarters there was real concern it was all very well having an agent inside the mafia but having an agent inducted to a senior level could compromise the entire operation theoretically to become a member you would have had to kill some somebody and their their position was that even though he had not had to kill somebody that that would destroy his credibility before the courts and dramatic events within the
bonano family power structure increased concerns in the FBI the banano family was in the midst of a Civil War and sunny black was right at the Forefront of it it had begun 2 years earlier when Sunny black had taken part in the murder of the boss of his own family Carmine galante and now Sunny was ordered to take out three rival capos [Music] [Applause] as the violence escalated there was an increasing risk that bistone could be killed in the crossfire now that this war was going on um this is the first time every everybody's carrying
a gun now Sunny black gave me a gun to carry because guys were with the other three captains were looking to to kill [Music] us he was involved in some of the most vicious territorial uh Wars that were going on on organized crime so he was right there at the focus point and then Sunny black put pistone in a position the FBI had been desperate to avoid Sunny ordered pistone to track down a rival mobster Bruno in Delicato and kill him so Sunny sends me to Florida because that's where they thought Bruno was and the
plan was if I found him I call the FBI they'd snatch him we make it look like it hit and I can go back and say you know I took care of him but the FBI decided it was far too dangerous and ordered pistone to pull out of the six-year operation [Music] when we ented the operation he was very upset because I'm sure he felt that if he could have been made his credibility would have been enhanced can you imagine the kicking the ass when it comes out you know Bano Mafia Family makes FBI undercover
FBI agent but I I couldn't convince him so we had a Surface 2 weeks later with piston safely out of the way Sunny was visited at his club by FBI agents the agents presented a picture of the three of them with a fourth man one of their most trusted crew members you know this man as Donnie Brasco he is in fact an FBI agent and sunny said well if I see him around then now I'll know I mean he really didn't believe it but eventually Sunny black began to accept the truth and the FBI watched
as he retreated to his pigeon coup to think over his options he realized that if Donny Braska were an undercover agent then as the man responsible for bringing him into the mafia he was sure to be [Music] killed the FBI wored in protection all he had to do was come forward he said no he knew what the results might be but he wouldn't betray his oath he decided to go down at the end and he knew pretty much that he was on a hit [Music] list two weeks later Sunny black was called to a meeting
I didn't want to see him get killed but you know he he brought it upon himself you know when the agents went to talk to him he could have easily call them later on and said look I'm coming in you know what kind of deal can I [Music] make but he didn't he was a real man and he was a real Gangster and that that's that's how we left it I said you know when you see those pigeon cops on the top of Sunny's apartment building getting torn down he's dead 17 days later they start
taking the pigeon cops down that's when they they killed him Sunny's body was found dumped in a New York River symbolically his hands which had welcomed an FBI agent into the mafia had been cut [Music] off the mob now closed in on anyone who had been involved with Donny Brasco they killed Sunny black they killed Tony miror they killed Joey did I want to see him get killed no would I rather hav't got to jail yeah but it wasn't my doing in my mind that got him killed the FBI learned that Lefty rerio had been
summoned to a meeting where he would be murdered they intercepted him and arrested him he thought it was a hit team you know because the agents were in surveillance clothed just in you know non-descript cars and uh he thought he was going to get [Music] clipped with pistone now out of the firing range the FBI used his information to go after of mafia members four years ago a petty jewel thief known as Donnie Brasco began working his way up inside the mob last year in a New York trial Brasco unmasked himself his real name Joseph
pistone undercover agent in the FBI I think I testified in about 17 different trials we had uh 235 convictions in New York you know we knocked out the bonano family to a great great extent ban family as I know of it I don't I think they are nothing but a street gang at this point in time in Milwaukee we took down the whole family you know the boss the uh the under boss the couple of his captains the same thing in Florida you know a Federal grand jury in Tampa today indicted Santo trafican and 11
others on racketeering charges that include gambling extortion bribery and narcotics in 1985 pistone testified in the trial of the Sicilian heroin traffickers known as The Pizza Connection it was one of the longest trials in American history all the principal defendants in this case were convicted 18 of 19 defendants overall were convicted it's an outstanding result we couldn't have hoped for anything better and it is a tremendous victory for uh the effort against the mafia and in what became known as the commission trial pistone identified the heads of the New York [Music] families they're calling up
the biggest sweep of Underworld leadership in nearly 30 years five reputed Godfathers arrested and indicted in New York his evidence and testimony was Central in securing convictions on 151 counts this Stone's operations spelled the beginning of the end for the mob as gangsters at all levels of the mafia were sent to jail amongst them was Lefty rerio imprisoned for conspiring to murder the three cappos Distributing drugs extortion bank robbery and illegal gambling in Florida so he spent like 15 years in jail I hate to beat a guy that was was his cell M or or
guard cuz he had to be the biggest pain in the arch there ever was the mafia responded by placing a $500,000 bounty on pistone's head to this day agent Joseph pistone lives under a pseudonym in an undisclosed location [Music] [Music] h [Music] [Music]
