Mob murder and mayhem made things so hot for an FBI agent who’d infiltrated the upper ranks of the Bonanno crime family that his secret mission had to be aborted.
The agent – who worked under the pseudonym “Donnie Brasco” – was considered for a role in the 1981 slayings of three Bonanno family capos, mob turncoat Sal Vitale testified yesterday in Brooklyn federal court.
It was Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano’s idea to bring Brasco into the plot.
“He said to Joe Massino, ‘We should take him with us.’ He wanted Donnie to play a significant role,” Vitale recounted at Massino’s murder and racketeering trial yesterday.
But Massino nixed the idea. And months later, after Brasco was unmasked as FBI agent Joseph Pistone, Napolitano was killed for his role in admitting Pistone into the family’s inner circle.
The Brasco episode, which devastated the Bonanno family, went on to become a hit 1997 movie with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.
If Brasco had been brought in on the hit plot as planned, the FBI would have called off his undercover mission.
“In an undercover operation, the agent can never participate in any violent crimes – whether it be an assault or a murder or an attempted murder,” said one expert.
Robert Mintz, a former deputy chief of the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Organized Crime Strike Force, said that had Pistone refused to take part in the killings, he might have been shunned by the very organization he’d infiltrated.
“Had he been given the green light to participate in these murders, it would have placed Pistone in a difficult position,” Mintz said.
“Any situation in which his loyalty would have been questioned could have been enough to effectively shut down his access to mob activity.”
But Pistone’s time was up anyhow, as his FBI handlers feared he was in danger.
“They were also worried about retribution for Joe,” one source said. “Guys are shooting at each other. That’s the reason why they pulled the plug on it.”
As a practical matter, allowing an undercover government agent to participate in violent crimes causes many problems – but it was OK for Pistone to be involved in loan-sharking or other nonviolent activities.
“If it ever came out that an undercover agent knew about a conspiracy to kill three people, there would be hell to pay,” said a source.
“Once it gets violent, or if he has to beat somebody up, he just can’t do that.”
The mob once had a practice of asking new members to participate in violent crimes to make sure they weren’t snitches.
“They wanted them to prove themselves, to make sure the guy isn’t an informer or an undercover agent,” said a source.
After Pistone ended his mission – in which he posed as a wiseguy jewel fencer – the FBI went to great lengths to make sure the mob knew he was a law officer.
In hope the Bonannos would follow their usual practice of not killing government agents, agents escorted him through Little Italy to make sure mobsters knew he was a cop, not a criminal.