Al Qaeda and The Mob

Friends of ours: "Big Paul" Castellano, Gambino Crime Family, John "Dapper Don" Gotti, Colombo Crime Family, Greg Scarpa Jr., Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, Joseph LaForte

After whacking "Big Paul" Castellano and taking control of the Gambino Family in 1985 John Gotti set up headquarters at The Ravenite Social Club - located on the ground floor of a five story brick building at 227 Mulberry St. in Little Italy. Over the next seven years, the FBI's New York Office (NYO) conducted an around the clock surveillance of the site: taking pictures of The Dapper Don in the street outside the club from a plant or "perch" across the street, bugging his phones and planting dozens of surveillance devices in the building owned by Gambino wiseguy Joseph "Joe The Cat" LaForte.

By 1997 "getting Gotti" became the "top investigative priority" of the NYO and the personal obsession of Special Agent Bruce Mouw who called the Gambino boss as "a stone cold killer." The investigation cost the Feds millions, but during three separate prosecutions in Federal Court "The Teflon Don" eluded conviction. It wasn't until Mouw and the FBI's Special Operations Group (SOG) were able to install mikes in the apartment of Netti Cirelli, who lived upstairs from the club, that they caught Gotti in the incriminating conversations with Sammy "The Bull" Gravano that finally brought him down in 1992. It was a victory that cemented the reputation of the FBI as the law enforcement agency that "always gets its man."

This story is very well known. What's not known -- and will be revealed in detail with the publication next week of my new book Triple Cross -- is that the same New York Office of the FBI - also known as the bin Laden "office of origin," blew an opportunity in the summer of 2001 - to stop the 9/11 "planes as missiles" plot dead in its tracks. How? by merely applying the same dogged surveillance techniques across the Hudson in Jersey City to an al Qaeda hot spot that one former FBI informant had called "a nest of vipers."

The address was 2828 Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City; the location of Sphinx Trading, a check cashing and mailbox store that does millions of dollars in wire transfers each year between New Jersey and the Middle East. Sphinx was incorporated on December 15th, 1987 by Waleed al Noor and Mohammed El-Attris, an Egyptian. The store was located only four doors down from the al-Salam mosque, presided over by blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (OAR). Rahman runs like a hot circuit cable through the epic story of FBI failures on the road to 9/11.

Convicted by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in 1995 along with 9 other members of a "jihad army" for seditious conspiracy, OAR was the leader of the hyper-violent al Gamma'a Islamyah (Islamic Group) responsible for the Luxor Massacre in 1997. He was also spiritual head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) the terror group headed by Osama bin Laden's number two: Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri. Not only was the Sheikh's cell responsible for the first attack on the WTC in 1993, but the 1998 African Embassy bombings and the October, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole were committed in his name. OAR was so important to the al Qaeda leadership that the infamous Crawford Texas, Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6th, 2001 referenced a 1998 intelligence report of a plot by bin Laden to hijack planes to free him. A similar report was contained in a PDB to Bill Clinton in 1998. So the NYO "office of origin" had good reason to focus on the dingy gray three-story building at 2824 Kennedy Boulevard that also housed what the Feds called "The Jersey Jihad Office."

One of the most astonishing revelations in my five year investigation into the FBI's handling of the war on terror was that Bureau agents knew as early as 1991 that Sphinx Trading was the location of a mailbox used by El Sayyid Nosair. A Prozac popping Egyptian-born janitor, it was Nosair who spilled the first al Qaeda blood on U.S. soil on the night of November 5th, 1990 when he gunned down Rabbi Meier Kahane, founder of The Jewish Defense League. Nosair had been trained by the principal subject of Triple Cross: Ali A. Mohamed, an ex Egyptian Army Major who had by then succeeded in penetrating the CIA in Hamburg Germany in 1984. Then after slipping past a Watch List and entering the U.S. a year later, Mohamed enlisted in the U.S. Army where he reached the rank of E-5 and got himself assigned to the highly secure JFK Special Warfare Center (SWC) at Fort Bragg, N.C. -- the advanced training school for officers of The Green Berets and Delta Force. It was members of Mohamed's radical Egyptian Army unit who had gunned down Anwar Sadat in 1981 and his C.O. at Bragg likened the chances of an ex-Egyptian Army officer with that kind of pedigree ending up at the JFK SWC with winning the Powerball Lottery.

On weekends Mohamed would travel up to New York and stay with Nosair -bringing along TOP SECRET memos he'd stolen from the SWC including the location of all Special Operations units worldwide - a treasure trove of intel that made its way to the al Qaeda leadership. On four successive weekends in July, 1989, during the tenure of Bush 41, Ali's trainees drove out from the al Farooq Mosque on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn (another OAR venue) to a shooting range in Calverton township on Long Island. There they spent hours firing AK-47's, handguns and other semi-automatic weapons. How do we know this? Because every weekend these "M.E.'s" or "Middle Eastern" men as they were known in Bureau speak were photographed by the Special Operations Group, the same unit that "Got Gotti" at the Ravenite Social Club.

Of the Ali Mohamed trainees photographed by the FBI half an hour above the Hamptons that hot July of '89, three were later convicted in the WTC bombing, Nosair, was convicted in the Kahane assassination and a third U.S. Black Muslim was convicted with the Blind Sheikh and Nosair in the plot to blow up the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan in 1995. Billed as the Day of Terror case, it was presided over by U.S. Attorneys Andrew McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald. As proof of their awareness that OAR's "jihad army" was an effective al Qaeda cell, Fitzie, as he was known, named 173 unindicted co-conspirators including Osama bin Laden, his brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, and Ali Mohamed - who by now was operating a sleeper cell in Silicon Valley. Also named on that list was Waleed al-Noor the co-incorporator of Sphinx Trading - proof that the Feds still had the Jersey City mailbox store on its radar.

What isn't known and will be revealed for the first time in Triple Cross was that Ali Mohamed had been acting as an FBI informant on the West Coast since 1992 - a year before the WTC bombing carried out by the same cell members he'd trained. More amazing, the revelation that in 1993 Ali had confessed to his hapless West Coast "control" agent John Zent that he was working for bin Laden and had helped set up al Qaeda training camps for jihadis in Khartoum. He'd also admitted that he'd provided al Qaeda members with anti-hijacking and intelligence training in Afghanistan.

If anyone in the bin Laden "office of origin" had been inclined to connect the dots, that single statement to a Special Agent in the San Francisco office should have set off alarm bells at 26 Federal Plaza - home of the FBI's NYO. But it didn't. Worse, when Mohamed was captured by alert Royal Canadian Mounted Police operatives in 1993 while attempting to smuggle al Qaeda terrorist into the U.S. from Vancouver, it was Special Agent Zent who vouched for Ali - effectively springing him from the custody of the Mounties.

After that, on the orders of Mohamed Atef, al Qaeda's military commander, Ali went to Nairobi where he took the pictures of the U.S. Embassy that bin Laden personally used to locate the suicide truck bomb that exploded five years later in August 1998. Along with simultaneous truck bombing in Tanzania 224 people died and 4,000 more were injured.

Using evidence from the SDNY court cases, interviews with current and retired Special Agents and documents from the FBI's own files, I prove in Triple Cross that Patrick Fitzgerald and Squad I-49 in the NYO could have prevented those bombings - not just by getting the truth from FBI informant Ali Mohamed, but by connecting him to Wadih El-Hage, one of the Kenya cell leaders. How would the Feds have done that? Easily.

They'd had wiretaps on El-Hage's Kenyan home since 1996. In August 1997, a year before the bombings, Special Agent Dan Coleman (of I-49) had searched El-Hage's house where he'd found Ali Mohamed's U.S. address and phone number. In fact, Fitzgerald himself had a face to face meeting with Mohamed in Sacramento, California in October 1997.

At that meeting Mohamed boldly told Fitzie that he "loved" bin Laden and didn't need a fatwa to attack the U.S. This "stone-cold" killer who had moved bin Laden and his entire al Qaeda entourage from Afghanistan to Khartoum in 1991 and trained the Saudi Billionaire's personal bodyguards in 1994 - then told Fitzgerald and other I-49 FBI agents including Jack Cloonan that he had dozens of al Qaeda sleepers that he could make operational on a moment's notice and that he himself could disappear at any time.

Then, After Mohamed walked out on him, Fitzgerald turned to Cloonan and declared that Ali was "the most dangerous man" he'd ever met and insisted, "We cannot let this man out on the street." But he did and ten months later in August, 1998 the bombs went off in Africa - delivered by another cell that Ali had helped train. It took Fitzgerald another month before he arrested Mohamed on September 10th bringing his 14 year terror spree to an end.

The immediate threat to the American people from Ali may have ended, but not his threat to the FBI and the Justice Department. You see, Ali, aka "Amiriki" or "Ali the American," was a one-man 9/11 Commission capable of ratting out the Feds on how he had eaten their lunch for years - how the two bin Laden "offices of origin" in the NYO and the SDNY where Fitzgerald was head of Organized Crime and terrorism - had been outgunned by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri dating back to that Calverton, L.I. surveillance in 1989. Fearful of what he would say if put on the stand and subjected to cross examination by defense lawyers in the upcoming Embassy bombing, Fitzgerald made sure that Ali was hidden away under a John Doe warrant. Finally, by October, 2000 Fitzie had cut a deal allowing the master spy to cop a plea and escape the death penalty.

In the end, Fitzgerald made his bones as the Justice Department's top al Qaeda buster by convicting El Hage and several other relatively minor bomb cell members. in U.S. vs. bin Laden in 2001. But the real "mastermind" of the Embassy bombings skated. Mohamed was allowed to slip into the security of custodial witness protection where he remains today - the greatest enigma of the war on terror.

All of this brings us full circle back to the big question: why should we care. What does it matter if an al Qaeda spy turned CIA asset, U.S. citizen, active duty Army sergeant and FBI informant was able to operate with virtual impunity for years, right under the noses of the best and the brightest in the FBI and DOJ?

Because Ali Mohamed was a metaphor for the dozens and dozens of counterterrorism failures by the NYO and SDNY on the road to 9/11 - while agents in the New York office like Bruce Mouw remained so obsessed with bringing down "The Dapper Don." Worse, at some point - I fix the date in 1996 - the evidence in Triple Cross shows that officials like Fitzgerald began suppressing evidence that might have proven embarrassing to the Bureau.

Much of it was contained in dozens of FBI 302 memos that can be examined by going to my website, www.peterlance.com. This treasure trove of intelligence was passed to the FBI, ironically, by a wiseguy name Greg Scarpa Jr. locked up in the cell next to WTC bomber and 9/11 plot mastermind Ramzi Yousef in the MCC - federal jail in Lower Manhattan. It was Yousef's uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohamed (KSM) who merely executed his nephew's "planes as missiles" plot after Ramzi's capture in 1995.

Among those 302's, a warning in December, 1996 of a plot by bin Laden (aka Bojinga) to hijack planes to free the blind Sheikh - the identical threat warning that was to appear in PDB's to Clinton in '98 and Bush 43 '01. Also, evidence of an active al Qaeda cell operating in New York City in 1996. But all of that intel got flushed by Patrick Fitzgerald and other DOJ officials in order to suppress a scandal in the NYO involved former Supervisory Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio. Lin or "the girlfriend" as he was called by Scarpa's father - a notorious Colombo Family killer - had been the target of a 1994 FBI internal affairs (OPR) investigation that threatened to derail the 60 remaining Colombo War cases in the (EDNY) Brooklyn. So, as I reported first in my last book COVER UP, Fitzgerald and other DOJ officials -- including current FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni - entered into an ends/means decision to discredit the younger Scarpa, bury the Yousef intel (falsely calling it a "hoax" and a "scam') and allowing DeVecchio to retire with a full pension.

They did this after he'd taken "the Fifth" and answered "I don't recall" more than 40 times after a grand of immunity - something that would have landed any other U.s. citizen in jail for contempt.

I'd told that tangled story of "The G-Man and The Hit Man" for the first time in Cover Up published in 2004. A year later, the deputy head of the Rackets Bureau in the Brooklyn D.A's office met with me. Later, armed with evidence supplied by forensic investigator Angela Clemente they empanelled a grand jury. On March 30th 2006 DeVecchio was indicted on four counts of second degree homicide stemming from his alleged "unholy alliance" with Scarpa Sr. But it was the desire by Federal officials in 1996 to bury the DeVecchio scandal and preserve those Colombo War cases that led to their ends/means decision to ignore all of that evidence from Ramzi Yousef to Greg Scarpa Jr. The belief that somehow the Mafia was more of a threat to New York than al Qaeda -- that caused the FBI to let their guard down on the bin Laden threat.

That's the only explanation I've been able to come up with to understand their stunning inability to keep an eye on Sphinx Trading.

There is now little doubt that if the Feds had devoted as much energy to a surveillance of Sphinx as they had to the Ravenite Social Club, they would have been in the middle of the 9/11 plot months before Black Tuesday. Because in July of 2001, Khalid al-Midhar and Salem al-Hazmi got their fake I.D.'s delivered to them in a mailbox at the identical location the FBI had been onto in the decade since El Sayyid Nosair had killed Meier Kahane. The man who supplied those fake ID's that allowed al-Midhar and al-Hazmi to board A.A. Flight #77 that hit the Pentagon, was none other than Mohammed El-Attriss the co-incorporator of Sphinx with Waleed al-Noor - whom Patrick Fitzgerald had put on the unindicted co-conspirators list along with bin Laden and Ali Mohamed in 1995.

How was it that Fitzgerald, the man Vanity Fair described as the bin Laden "brain," possessing "scary smart" intelligence, had not connected the dots and ordered the same kind of "perch" or "plant" to watch Sphinx that the Bureau had used against Gotti? Which "stone cold" killer was more a threat to the security of New York City? The Teflon Don or bin Laden's master spy who cut his deal without giving up those "sleepers" he'd told Fitzgerald about in October of 1997.

Here's an irony in a story pregnant with them:

Patrick Fitzgerald made his bones as a terror fighter by prosecuting U.S. vs. bin Laden, the trial of the African Embassy bombers that he and squad I-49 failed to stop. As a reward he was appointed U.S. Attorney in Chicago and got tapped as Special Prosecutor in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation. We now know that even after learning the identify of the Plame leak source -- Bush retainer Richard Armitage - in the early weeks of the investigation, Fitzgerald still subjected the New York Times and Time magazine to a barrage of subpoenas unseen since the McCarthy era - going so far as to force the jailing of ex-Times reporter Judith Miller for 85 days. Until now, Patrick Fitzgerald has been famous for two things: prosecuting al Qaeda members and chilling the press. With the publication of Triple Cross his failure to contain bin Laden's master spy will now be on the record. The book hits the stores on Tuesday, November 21st.

Thanks to Peter Lance

Chicago Outfit or Chicago Hope?

Friends of ours: Frank Calabrese, James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, Frank "The German" Schweihs

Like the old grey mare, the Chicago outfit isn't like it used to be.

"You are dealing with a bunch of old men. So they are going to have problems. I mean they are not unlike other senior citizens. They have problems," said Joe Lopez, Frank Calabrese's lawyer.

Defense attorneys noted in court Thursday that a number of the dozen or so remaining defendants in the "Family Secrets" case have a myriad of health problems, and they urged Uncle Sam to pick up the tab.

The outfit's aches and pains range from possible back surgery to new choppers. Calabrese has a bad back, needs an MRI and probably will have surgery. James Marcello needs dentures and is suffering from gum disease. Joe Lombardo has heart problems and Frank Schweihs is hard of hearing and needs hearing aids.

Calabrese's lawyer outlined his client's woes at the federal jail. "He's taking 15 pills a day, and its having an effect on him up there on 21 because he's very uncomfortable where he's at," Lopez said.

Meanwhile lawyer Rick Halprin argues that 77-year-old Joe Lombardo was not involved in any criminal conspiracy and never has been a member of the mob. In fact Lombardo once took out an ad in a newspaper denying any membership in the outfit. "There is no allegation in that indictment that Joe Lombardo is a made member or a boss or an underboss," Halprin said.

Some of the defendants claim they are not able to listen to or watch FBI video and audio tapes in jail due to poor equipment. They want occasional visits to their lawyers' offices to screen the material there.

Thanks to John "Bulldog" Drummond

Fuggedaboudit! The Show Must Go On

It appears the show will go on after a federal judge Wednesday refused to block this week's opening of a Batavia middle school play branded racially insensitive by an Italian-American coalition.

U.S. District Court Judge John Grady said free speech trumps any alleged harm to the plaintiff, a 12-year-old pupil at Rotolo Middle School. Grady also said he failed to see how the plaintiff was harmed by the play, "Fuggedaboudit: A Little Mobster Comedy," because it was not shown that the boy was of the same social class as those depicted. Grady, however, admitted he had not read the play.

"Does this play communicate to a rational person that all Americans of Italian descent are members of the Mafia or have criminal inclinations?" the judge asked in his Chicago courtroom.

"I have difficulty with the notion that this young plaintiff is, for purposes of today's discussion, in the same class as 12 or so adults depicted in the play," the judge said later.

The plaintiff's mother, Marina Amoroso-Levato, said she was upset by the ruling. "I think the play was a total, from cover to cover, annihilation of Italian-Americans," she said. "If the judge didn't see that, it's unfortunate."

A civil rights suit filed Tuesday by the coalition is pending.

Performances are set for Friday during school hours, and on Friday and Saturday evenings, at Rotolo Middle School, 1501 S. Raddant Rd. Pupils who do not want to attend the play will have the option of participating in another activity, according to a statement released Wednesday by Supt. Jack Barshinger.

The school has also provided support for the cast, crew and faculty working on the play, the statement said, to help everyone understand the complexity of the concerns surrounding this play.

Members of the coalition are considering a non-disruptive response to the performances, said Tony Barratta, president of the Grand Lodge of Illinois, Order Sons of Italy in America.

They also expressed dismay at the judge's ruling, but said they were not surprised. "The banner of free speech does allow people wide latitude, and we're very grateful for that," said Dominic DiFrisco, president emeritus of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans. "But we were hoping that fair speech would be considered in this case.

"Whatever the judge's decision, going to court was necessary to raise the issue of gross injustice that's constantly barraging the Italian-American community," he said.

He urged the school to balance the performance with lessons about the positive contributions of Italian-Americans.

The school statement characterized the play as a spoof of various characters whose good deeds are misconstrued by everyone.

A script released by the Sons of Italy last week indicates the play is the story of two brothers, Joey and Gino Caprese, who are opening an Italian restaurant. Their customers include two mobsters who are inspired to do something good after being on the take for so long.

The material is not offensive to Italian-Americans, argued the school's attorney, Anthony Scariano. "The only two clowns in the play are the American FBI agents who can't get a body recording right," he said.

The uproar over the play began when the plaintiff's mother read the "Fuggedaboudit" script and contacted the Sons of Italy, the nation's oldest and largest Italian heritage organization.

Amoroso-Levato decided she wouldn't let her son see it. "He's upset--he doesn't want his schoolmates to have to view this." But she said the experience is a lesson for her son. "I think it will be good for him to stand up for what he believes in."

Thanks to Jeff Cohen and Kate Hawley

Hoffa's Hitman Comes Forward?

Do we finally know the identity of who killed Jimmy Hoffa? The Hoffa Files believes it does in reviewing how the tough guy helped make Las Vegas. The beginning of the end started for Hoffa when he asked "I heard you paint houses."

Fuggedaboudit: A Little Mobster Comedy

A national Italian-American organization is seeking to legally prevent a Chicago suburban school from staging a play about mobsters, alleging stereotyping.

The Rotolo Middle school in Batavia, west of Chicago, set off a national protest campaign by the Order Sons of Italy in America, who claim the play, "Fuggedaboudit: A Little Mobster Comedy" is offensive.

Attorney Joseph Rago filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to stop the play. He said it is "completely racially and ethnically offensive and inappropriate for middle school children," the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The show was to have a dress rehearsal Wednesday and run Friday and Saturday nights.

The school has refused to cancel the show and officials refused to speak with reporters, the newspaper said.

It was a mother of an Italian-American student at the school who first complained but she asked not to be named to spare her son any ridicule, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Bonanno's Name Bambino Godfather

Friends of ours: Bonanno Crime Family, Salvatore "Sal the Ironworker/Sal the Zip" Montanga, Joseph Massino, Baldassare "Baldo" Amato, Patrick "Patty from the Bronx" DeFilippo, Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, John "Dapper Don" Gotti, Vincent "the Chin" Gigante

The Bonanno crime family has tapped a man of steel to rebuild its crumbling empire, the Daily News has learned.

He's Salvatore (Sal the Ironworker) Montagna, the newly minted boss of the Mafia family, according to law enforcement sources - and he's practically a bambino at only 35 years of age.

The Sicilian-born Montagna and his wife, Francesca, own a small ironworks company in Brooklyn, but they show no signs of living the high-life of a Mafia don. The couple and their three daughters live in a modest ranch house in working-class Elmont, L.I., not far from the Queens border.

"Putting someone that young and relatively unknown in charge indicates that they're desperately seeking to salvage the remnants of the family from the recent prosecutions and convictions," said Mark Feldman, former chief of organized crime for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney's office.

Feldman said the move clearly "signals desperation" on the part of a mob family that has seen three bosses and acting dons bite the dust in three years. Most noteworthy was the conviction of longtime family boss Joseph Massino, who is now serving life in prison.

Last night, a teenage girl answered the door of Montagna's vinyl-sided home on Oakley Ave. and said the reputed crime kingpin was not at home. Two little sisters stood at her side. Outside, a small construction crew was wrapping up its day working on Montagna's brick driveway.

A short time later, Francesca Montagna drove up in a late-model Lexus SUV and turned angry when asked if her husband was the new head of the Bonanno family. "I don't know what you're talking about," said the dark- haired woman, dressed in a sweatsuit. "I have kids in here. It's not appropriate for you to be here."

Until now, Montagna has rarely appeared on the radar of the NYPD and the feds, and neighbors said they knew nothing about any reputed mob ties. Still, the Mafia talk didn't worry them. "Am I scared?" said one local. "Absolutely not. I come from Brooklyn. Believe me, when you live next to one of these people, there's nothing to be afraid of."

Another neighbor found the suggestion "ridiculous," but quickly added, "We'd be shocked and scared at the same time if that is true. Wow!"

The Montagnas run the family-owned Matrix Steel Co. on Bogart St. in Brooklyn. According to Dun & Bradstreet, the firm supplies structural material for builders and reported a modest $1.5 million in sales last year.

In 2003, Montagna pleaded guilty to criminal contempt charges and was sentenced to probation for refusing to answer questions before a Manhattan grand jury. He had been indicted a year earlier after a probe by the Manhattan district attorney's office as one of 20 wiseguys charged in a takedown of a Mafia crew allegedly involved in gambling, loansharking and weapons possession.

Whether the new Bonanno boss has any other arrests was unclear yesterday.

"He's well-liked by the rank and file," said an underworld source, adding that Montagna is also known as Sal the Zip, a reference to the name bestowed on members of the crime family's Sicilian wing.

Sources said Montagna was close to legendary Bonanno gangster Baldassare (Baldo) Amato, another immigrant from near Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily, and served in the crew of capo Patrick (Patty from the Bronx) DeFilippo. Those guys are largely history now, with Amato recently sentenced to life in prison and DeFilippo facing a retrial on murder charges.

Led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Andres, the feds have indicted and convicted more than 70 Bonanno gangsters since 2002, leaving behind about 75 shell-shocked members on the street. Sources said Montagna's promotion couldn't have happened without the blessing of Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano, who once operated Hello Gorgeous, a hair salon in the Bronx, and became the official boss of the crime family after Massino turned rat.

Thomas Reppetto, author of the just-published "Bringing Down The Mob: A War Against the American Mafia (Henry Holt)," said the new breed of boss pales in comparison to past godfathers like the late John Gotti or Vincent Gigante. "There may no longer be a boss in the sense that we understood the term, an all-powerful figure at the top, because naming an official boss provides the FBI with a clear target," Reppetto said.

Thanks to John Marzulli

Giancana to Hit the Big Screen

Friends of ours: Sam "Momo" Giancana

Sam Giancana, a mobster popular among conspiracy theorists for his connections to notables such as John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, will soon be shooting up the big screen.

Infomercial producer Mark Williams has acquired the film rights to the novel "Double Cross," which tells the story of how the gangster rose from being a hit man for Al Capone to becoming a powerful don.

Giancana, who was nicknamed "Momo" because of his unpredictable vicious behavior, was assassinated in 1975 before he was to appear before a Senate committee investigating CIA and Mafia links to plots to kill Fidel Castro.

The 1992 book -- written by Giancana's brother, Chuck Giancana, and his nephew, Sam Giancana -- stated that he ordered the deaths of Kennedy and Monroe.

It will be adapted for the screen by Edgar Allan Poe Award winner Alfonse Ruggiero Jr., an editor-turned-writer who established himself in the crime field with credits such as "Miami Vice," "Wiseguy," "Crime & Punishment" and the 1990s television version of "The Untouchables."

When the adaptation is made, it wouldn't be the first time Giancana is portrayed onscreen. He has been the subject of several screen biographies, including one in which he was played by Tony Curtis. Rod Steiger played him in the "Sinatra" miniseries. Producer Mark Wolper at one point was trying to get a Giancana miniseries off the ground for TNT.

Williams, who first developed an interest in the mob when growing up in Chicago and knowing people who had links to the organization, made his name in the infomercial industry, becoming one of its top producers. Among his numerous credits are "How to be Successful in America Today" and "The Donald Trump Way to Wealth."

Gambino Wiseguy Gets 20 Years in Prison

Friends of ours: Michael Yannotti, John "Junior" Gotti, Gambino Crime Family

Curtis Sliwa brushed away tears yesterday as a judge sentenced a Gambino thug he long wanted to see behind bars to 20 years in prison.

Jurors may have cleared Michael Yannotti in the 1992 point-blank shooting of the radio host - but Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin refused to show the Mafia muscle any mercy as she sent him up the river on an unrelated racketeering count.

Sliwa was shot twice as he tried to dive out the window of a stolen yellow cab whose doors had been rigged shut.

Scheindlin made clear she still believes Yannotti was the triggerman. "How Mr. Sliwa survived the attack at all is simply a miracle," Scheindlin said. She said Sliwa, the founder of the city's famed Guardian Angels, "demonstrated superhuman strength and ingenuity to get out of that death car."

After watching crime boss John Gotti Jr. score three mistrials for his alleged role in the shooting, Sliwa said it was the first time he'd felt a measure of justice for the attack he says wrecked his second marriage and left him with intestinal injuries that cause him suffering every day. "This is not Sicily, this is not Baghdad, this is not Gaza," Sliwa said. "When he shot those bullets into me he attempted to stifle my free speech. ... It's a nightmare ... mentally and physically."

Yannotti, 43, shook his head in disbelief each time Scheindlin linked him to the shooting. Prosecutors say Gotti sent Yannotti and another wiseguy to abduct Sliwa on June 19, 1992, following Sliwa's relentless on-air attacks on the Gotti clan.

Yannotti, the feds insist, jumped up from the passenger seat of the cab and, shouting, "Take this, you son of a b----," fired two shots from a .38-caliber gun that hit Sliwa in his leg and abdomen.

The 20-year sentence stunned Yannotti's supporters. "Jesus," one whispered as Yannotti's sobbing sister ran from court.

Jurors at Yannotti's 2005 trial acquitted him of the Sliwa shooting on a vote of seven to five favoring conviction. But prosecutor Victor Hou argued that the judge could factor the shooting into Yannotti's sentence on racketeering charges that included extortion and loansharking counts because of the "ample evidence" of his involvement.

Scheindlin agreed and ignore Yannotti's handwritten plea for mercy. "My parents are older and I don't have much time," Yannotti, 43, wrote. "I would like them to know their only son turned out all right." He asked that she allow him to restart his life with a wife he married in 1999 and two young daughters he called "the little treasures."

Sliwa vows to press ahead with a lawsuit accusing Junior Gotti of his role in his shooting. "The guy I still hold responsible for this is John Gotti Jr.," Sliwa said.

Thanks to Thomas Zambito

Lombardo Might Argue He Dropped Out of Conspiracy

Friends of ours: Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo

When Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo was out of prison in the early 1990s, he felt his parole officer was hassling him over his alleged leadership of the Chicago Outfit.

So Lombardo told the parole officer that he would make him the head of the Chicago Outfit, a source familiar with the matter said. Of course, Lombardo did nothing of the sort, but that didn't stop Lombardo from aggravating his parole officer when the man came by on surprise visits to check up on him.

Had the parole officer called any mob meetings? Lombardo would ask.

More important, was the parole officer getting his take?

Lombardo even took out a newspaper ad saying he wasn't a "made" member and telling anyone who heard his name used in connection with crimes to call his parole officer. Beneath the clownery of more than a decade ago lie the seeds of a possible defense today.

Lombardo, 77, is charged along with other reputed top Chicago mobsters in one of the most significant cases ever against the Outfit. Prosecutors place responsibility for 18 mob hits on the organization Lombardo was allegedly a part of for decades.
The feds have charged Lombardo with only one of the murders specifically, that of Daniel Seifert, who was shotgunned in front of his family in 1974 before he could testify against Lombardo in a criminal case. Lombardo will argue he has an alibi for the time the murder happened.

Lombardo was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1983 for conspiring to bribe Sen. Howard Cannon to kill or at least delay legislation deregulating the trucking industry. In 1986, he was sentenced to 16 years -- later reduced to 14 -- for his role in maintaining hidden interests in several Las Vegas casinos and skimming their proceeds. He got out in 1992.

In the current case against him, Lombardo is expected to deny ever being a "made" member of the mob. But if the jury doesn't buy that, then Lombardo could argue he clearly dropped out of any criminal conspiracy more than five years ago -- given the ad he took out in 1992.

By law, withdrawing from a conspiracy more than five years before an indictment is brought is a valid defense to not being part of any ongoing conspiracy. The feds charged the case last year.

Lombardo's attorney, Rick Halprin, declined to comment on the defense but when pressed did not deny that Lombardo's defense team is considering a so-called withdrawal defense, among its options.

It's a defense that's rarely used, because the standard for withdrawing from a criminal conspiracy is high -- for instance, calling the cops and telling them you're no longer part of a criminal conspiracy. It would likely be up to a jury to decide whether Lombardo's actions, such as taking out the ad, met the standard, and whether he truly did drop out -- a claim federal officials are expected to contest vigorously. The possible defense was suggested in a recent court filing by Lombardo's defense team that sought copies of all his parole and probation material.

Lombardo reportedly has an unblemished record since his release from prison, and that information could be used to buttress his claim that he had nothing to do with organized crime after his release.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

Mobsters Battle World Trade Center?

Last month, Paramount Pictures held a cocktail party at the tony Hollywood restaurant Mortons to honor director Oliver Stone. Studio chief Brad Grey took the stage to praise the director for his work on "World Trade Center," which Paramount distributed. The movie's composer tapped out a few tunes from the film's original score, while star Nicolas Cage mingled with the assembled executives and movie-industry media.

Held under the guise of celebrating Mr. Stone's award for director of the year from the Hollywood Film Festival, the event was widely seen as the starting gun for Paramount's campaign for an Oscar nomination for "World Trade Center." After a few barren seasons at the Academy Awards, Paramount's top brass are determined to win recognition at next February's Oscar ceremony.

Paramount's attempt to tackle the 9/11 attacks might seem like an Oscar natural except for one problem: rival 9/11 movie "United 93" from Universal Pictures. While the two films tiptoed around each other at the box office this year as audiences questioned whether it was too soon for Hollywood to take on the subject, they are going head-to-head for an Oscar nomination.

Mindful that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is unlikely to nominate both 9/11 movies for one of the five contender slots set aside for the Best Picture award, Paramount and Universal are preparing sharp-elbowed campaigns to reel in Oscar voters. In stark contrast to the low-key marketing they used when the two movies hit theaters, the studios are spending many millions of dollars to blitz Academy members with big-bang advertising and glitzy events such as the one at Mortons.

Each fall, studios lavish much time and money on campaigns aimed at winning an Oscar nod for their movies. The aggressive lobbying by filmmakers such as Harvey Weinstein for "Shakespeare in Love," "Chicago" and other movies proved that such promotion can pay off. "Crash" upset the apple cart by winning Best Picture at the last awards in March after a finely tuned campaign that targeted the biggest presence in the Academy: actors.

This year's Oscar playing field is wide open. Possible early contenders include Martin Scorsese's mob thriller "The Departed," the quirky, low-budget comedy "Little Miss Sunshine," the musical "Dreamgirls" (which opens next month) and Clint Eastwood's war epic "Flags of Our Fathers." But no title has yet emerged as a slam-dunk for a Best Picture nomination.

Both Universal and Paramount have strong motivation to get their 9/11 movies nominated. Universal has been an aggressive presence in the pre-Oscar race in recent years but has few other candidates to push this year. At Paramount, Mr. Grey is eager for some Oscar glitter after turning around the Viacom-owned studio. His boss Sumner Redstone also has been talking up the movie's Oscar chances around town.

To help craft its campaign, Universal's team has tapped former Weinstein strategist Tony Angellotti, who has guided 17 movies to best-picture nominations, including "Shakespeare in Love" and "The English Patient." Paramount, meantime, has dedicated a sprawling team to its lobbying, including Hollywood public-relations maven Pat Kingsley.

Both campaigns share an obvious challenge: their subject matter. "United 93" is a documentary-style, real-time account of United Airlines Flight 93, the hijacked jet that crashed in Pennsylvania. "World Trade Center" is a more polished drama about police officers buried in the rubble of the towers. While "United 93" literally ends with a plane crash, "World Trade Center" concludes with an uplifting rescue scene. "It's going to be tough getting the voters to watch these movies," said Sasha Stone, editor Oscarwatch.com, a Web site dedicated to tracking the awards. "Who wants to devote their time to feeling awful for two hours?"

Historically, the Academy members have sometimes had trouble embracing difficult material based on real-life events. "Hotel Rwanda," a gritty drama about the civil war in that African nation, was snubbed in 2005 for a Best Picture nomination after winning nominations and awards in other competitions. After "Saving Private Ryan" missed out to "Shakespeare in Love" in 1999, the filmmakers of the war drama discovered that many Academy members hadn't seen the movie. (The Academy tells its 5,800-plus voters each year not to vote for films they haven't watched.)

If the box office is anything to go by, "World Trade Center" has had more success at finding an audience than "United 93." Pitching itself as a more elaborate Hollywood production about courage and survival, Paramount's movie sold about $152 million worth of tickets world-wide, while "United 93" brought in about half that, despite having an edge with the critics.

Indeed, a big part of Paramount's campaign is positioning its movie as the "successful 9/11 movie," based on its ability to draw a bigger audience. Two-page ads in Hollywood's trade publications this week featured the world-wide ticket sales figures for "World Trade Center" in huge print. Of course, the audience has little to do with how profitable each movie was: "World Trade Center" cost considerably more. But "United 93" does face a bigger challenge in creating the aura of being a big Oscar movie.

The Academy is set to announce its nominations on Jan. 23. (The Oscars awards ceremony is Feb. 25.) That gives the studios just six weeks to work on voters before the ballots are sent out.

The Universal team got a head start last month by blanketing Academy members with DVD versions of the films, called screeners. The team's challenge is to rebuild interest in the title: The movie came out in April, and publicity for the DVD debut in September has come and gone. Studios often release their Oscar contenders in the fall to keep them fresh in the minds of members. Still, "Crash" showed that an early-in-the-year release can succeed if it is backed by an aggressive push.

The "United 93" screeners arrived on desks and mailboxes in Hollywood at the same time as an expensive advertising campaign: eye-catching, three-page ads in newspapers and magazines featuring a single tagline on the first page: "A movie can matter." The ads used no images, just words, and played up the decent reviews the movie garnered. To some in the movie business, the big ads were more striking than the low-key campaign Universal used during "United 93"'s actual run in theaters.

By striking early, Universal hopes to get Oscar voters to see the movie before they get bogged down with other contenders. Following close on its heels, though, was the screener for "World Trade Center," which was released in theaters in August. Paramount is running continuous print ads showing dramatic images from the movie and also plans to use the DVD release of the movie next month to boost its Academy push. The DVD will be accompanied by yet more advertising and possibly another elaborate event featuring the stars.

The fact that "World Trade Center" is the product of a popular if polemic director and features a well-known cast including Mr. Cage may give the movie a leg up. For one thing, it will be considered in the acting-awards categories of the Oscars, something unlikely for "United 93" because that film used mostly unknown performers, with some people involved in the events that day playing themselves.

The big question is whether Paramount will wheel out survivors of the World Trade Center disaster to support its campaign. Both studios are aware that highlighting the filmmaking over the subject material is a safer route as the time to check off Oscar ballots nears. Academy members say they rarely vote to make a statement, which may have had something to do with why "Crash" overturned "Brokeback Mountain" at the last awards.

Ms. Stone says a big risk for the studios is that the audience for the two 9/11 movies may be divided and thus diluted, with members favoring one film or the other. "The two films might cancel each other out," she says. "There's a good chance that will happen."

Thanks to Merissa Marr