Tokyo Joe: The Man Who Brought Down the Chicago Mob (Mafia o Utta Otoko)

The yakuza, Japan's homegrown mobsters, are favorites of local filmmakers but not documentarians, for reasons entirely understandable. A documentary that seeks to delve into the inner workings of the Yamaguchi-gumi might find an audience, but the hurdles to making it, such as scouting subjects willing to dish openly (and possibly suicidally) on camera, would be formidable. Better to make another TV-friendly program on tuna fishermen.

Documentarian Ken'ichi Oguri, backed by uber-producers Kazuyoshi Okuyama and Chihiro Kameyama, has finessed this difficulty by focusing his new film, "Tokyo Joe: The Man Who Brought Down the Chicago Mob (Mafia o Utta Otoko)," on Ken Eto — a Japanese-American FBI informant who put 15 Chicago mobsters and mob associates behind bars in the 1980s.

Chicago Mobster Ken Eto AKA Tokyo Joe

Eto was no ordinary snitch. Born in California in 1919 and raised by a harshly disciplinarian father, Eto was a wild, scrappy and highly intelligent kid. He found his true metier in a World War II detention camp, where he fleeced fellow detainees in poker games. After the war, he settled in Chicago, where he honed his skills in card sharping while insinuating himself into the mob-run gambling business.

In 1983, Mafia capo Vincent Solano feared that Eto, recently busted for running a massive numbers operation and out on bail, was going to spill to the cops. He ordered a hit, carried out by two henchmen, who drilled three bullets into Eto's skull in a parked car. Incredibly, Eto survived, and, while recovering in the hospital, decided that Solano's betrayal trumped his loyalty to his Mafia bosses. He entered the FBI's witness protection program and spent the next several years giving testimony that delivered a body blow to the Chicago mob.

Oguri tells this story through interviews, mostly notably with Elaine Smith, the former FBI agent who put Eto behind bars (and later wrote a book about him), Jeremy Margolis, the former federal prosecutor who persuaded Eto to turn snitch, and Steven Eto, Eto's son by his second wife.

These talking heads are fascinating characters in their own right. Smith, who joined the Bureau at the late age of 34 when it was still a mostly male preserve, comes across as a salty, wised-up type, spinning anecdote after engaging anecdote about Eto, his case and the ways of the Chicago mob. Of more than 1,000 victims of mob hits, she claims, Eto was the only one to survive. Steven Eto pungently humanizes his father, who ran numbers out of a coffee shop near home and once memorably told his young son, "If you bring a weapon to a fight, be prepared to kill the guy, because if you don't, you'll have an enemy for the rest of your life."

Eto himself appears only fleetingly on the screen, being badgered by the media after his arrest and testifying as a witness for the prosecution, but he is a riveting presence whose hooded eyes see all but tell nothing. Oguri's film about his exploits is, for anyone interested in Mafia lore, pure manna from wise-guy heaven.

Thanks to Mark Schilling

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Creation of a Tri-national Force Addressing Organized Crime

The presidents of El Salvador, Salvador Sanchez Cerén; Guatemala, Jimmy Morales; and Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez; and the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, met at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. on September 23, 2016 to follow up on progress in addressing regional  migration, security, governance, and economic challenges within the framework of the Northern Triangle governments’ Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity and the United States Strategy for Engagement in Central America, with the goal of reducing incentives that drive irregular migration.  The leaders also participated in a dialogue with the private sector and a broader audience of stakeholders on Central America, to discuss innovative activities in the areas of infrastructure, logistics, and energy.

The governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the United States reaffirmed their commitments enshrined in the Blair House Communique on February 24, 2016.  One such example has been the establishment of consultative groups in each country to provide oversight of the Plan, with participation of the public and private sectors, and of civil society.  The dialogue between the leaders was based on the commitments established during the January 14, February 24, and May 3, 2016 meetings that defined specific objectives with regard to security, governance, and prosperity in the region, including efforts to promote safe, legal, and orderly migration that include public messaging campaigns to combat irregular migration and provide comprehensive assistance to returned migrants.

In their remarks, the Northern Triangle presidents highlighted the progress each government has made, and emphasized the actions undertaken at a regional level, such as the trade and customs integration process, the establishment of a Regional Plan for Combatting Organized Crime, the creation of a Tri-national Force addressing organized crime, and the integration of investigations and information systems related to gangs, with efforts coordinated by public prosecutors.

Additionally, they highlighted progress and accomplishments at the national level:

In El Salvador, in the wake of the government’s efforts to improve security, homicides have dropped approximately 50 percent since the beginning of the year.  El Salvador has also aggressively targeted the financial networks of transnational criminal organizations.  Operation Jaque resulted in the July arrest of 78 individuals and the seizure of real estate properties, 178 vehicles, and over 600 bank accounts.  In addition, the government has established public-private dialogues on economic growth, security, and education.  These discussions have helped develop specific proposals such as the Plan Safe El Salvador and the approval of reforms to promote private investment.  Currently, the President is leading a dialogue on taxation with the main political parties.  In the fight against corruption, the Secretariat of Transparency and Anti-Corruption presented more than 150 cases of alleged corruption in public administration to the Attorney General’s Office.  The Attorney General’s Office has received support from the Executive, including additional funding to hire more assistant prosecutors.

Guatemala has significantly increased tax collection through judicial and administrative measures, and has adopted new methods to combat tax evasion and contraband.  The government continues to fight corruption and strengthen the Public Prosecutor’s office.  In the area of security, as a result of the strengthening and modernization of the National Civilian Police, there has been a decrease in the homicide rate, continued efforts to dismantle criminal organizations, and a record number of drug seizures.  The government recently presented an urban development policy to promote job creation and improve standards of living.  To strengthen coordination and alignment actions of the Plan, the government’s Consultative Body agreed to implement a pilot plan in three municipalities.

In Honduras, notable achievements include the implementation of the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (known by its Spanish acronym MACCIH) and a sustained increase in tax revenue, projected to be 17.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2016.  In addition, there has been unprecedented progress by the Special Commission for the Clean-Up and Transformation of the National Police, which has removed 40 percent of Honduran police officers and referred information on their cases to the judicial system.  Honduras also continues with capacity building of the National Police and the dismantling of human trafficking and smuggling organizations, as well as ongoing efforts against extortion.  The government, together with the private sector, launched the Honduras 20/20 program to strengthen the priority productive sectors of the national economy, fostering job creation for its citizens.  The ongoing implementation of the Better Life program combats poverty throughout the country.

The leaders expressed their appreciation to Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank, for his support to the Alliance for Prosperity Plan from its inception.  They also expressed their appreciation to the Foreign Ministers of Mexico, Colombia, and Chile for their participation in the meeting.

The three presidents also recognized the efforts by the United States Congress to allocate resources for the Strategy.  They also recognized Vice President Biden for his commitment to the Plan on behalf of the Obama Administration.

Finally, the four leaders agreed to the establishment of the United States-Northern Triangle High Level Dialogue that will further the efforts to promote a secure, stable, and prosperous Central America.

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Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime

Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime.

What should we make of the outsized role organized crime plays in conflict and crisis, from drug wars in Mexico to human smuggling in North Africa, from the struggle in Crimea to scandals in Kabul? How can we deal with the convergence of politics and crime in so-called 'mafia states' such as Guinea-Bissau, North Korea or, as some argue, Russia?

Drawing on unpublished government documents and mafia memoirs, James Cockayne discovers the strategic logic of organized crime, hidden in a century of forgotten political--criminal collaboration in New York, Sicily and the Caribbean. He reveals states and mafias competing - and collaborating -- in a competition for governmental power. He discovers mafias influencing elections, changing constitutions, organizing domestic insurgencies and transnational terrorism, negotiating peace deals, and forming governmental joint ventures with ruling groups. And he sees mafias working with the US government to spy on American citizens, catch Nazis, try to assassinate Fidel Castro, invade and govern Sicily, and playing unappreciated roles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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Police Corruption and Cover-ups Surround "The Brotherhood - The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia"

In 1994, an underboss of the Lucchese crime family, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, flipped. He was in federal custody, facing numerous murder and racketeering counts, when he informed FBI agents that, in return for a "pad" of $4,000 a month, two New York City Police Department detectives had regularly slipped him confidential information from police and FBI organized-crime files: names and addresses of confidential informants (who were then knocked off), tipoffs on raids and phone taps, and advance warnings of arrests.

For almost a decade, Casso said that the two detectives, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, conducted secret investigations for the Lucchese family. Eventually, Casso claimed, he hired the detectives as hit men. They used their badges to put unsuspecting gangland targets at ease, killed them and collected payoffs of up to $100,000.

What makes "Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia" even more alarming is the criminal negligence of law-enforcement officials, who showed little interest in bringing Caracappa and Eppolito to justice. "The Brotherhoods" chronicles years of egregious police corruption and the stupefying bureaucratic indifference that allowed it to flourish. It was not until 11 years after Casso first fingered the two cops that they were finally arrested.

After receiving life sentences, the two had their convictions thrown out by a judge who ruled that the statute of limitations had expired. At the time of their arrest, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent said, "It's been a long time coming." Well, it's still not over. The book closes with the government's appeal of the ruling.

Investigative journalist Guy Lawson teamed up for this book with William Oldham, a retired NYPD detective who spearheaded the police corruption investigation as an investigator for the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn. Oldham brings an insider's insight and analysis to this absorbing book, which serves as a cautionary tale to all police departments. Because the NYPD brass did not assiduously follow up on the signs of corruption, the job of every cop in the department became more difficult.

Eppolito and Caracappa were longtime best friends and former partners as young detectives in south Brooklyn. Thin, quiet and with a preference for dark suits, Caracappa was called "the Prince of Darkness" by other detectives. He was also one of the department's top detectives, a go-to guy in the elite Major Case Squad, which investigated high-profile, difficult cases. Caracappa had "written the book on organized crime murders in New York," the authors explain. "If a wise guy was killed in Queens or the Bronx and the homicide detective who caught the case wanted to know how his victim fit in the Mafia, he would look in Caracappa's book for connections."

Eppolito, on the other hand, was "fat, loud, foul-mouthed ... with a thick mustache and a taste for gold chains. ... He was a conspicuous cop - he dressed like a wise guy." He also wrote a memoir called "Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob." Given his family's connections with organized crime, it is remarkable that NYPD screeners let Eppolito onto the force. His grandfather - "Diamond Louie" - and his father - "Fat the Gangster" - were members of the Gambino crime family.

Eppolito served as his father's bagman when he was a boy, handing cash to local cops so they wouldn't break up Fat the Gangster's dice and poker games. At his father's funeral - where the FBI took surveillance photos of the numerous organized-crime figures in attendance - Eppolito was slipped notes by wise guys.

After killing time at a no-work job set up by a Gambino relative, Eppolito decided to join the NYPD. To Eppolito's way of thinking, he was simply exchanging one brotherhood for another.

Eppolito retired before his memoir was published; Caracappa didn't. He was still on the force, and in the author's note for "Mafia Cop," Eppolito calls him "my closest and dearest friend." When Oldham came across a copy of Eppolito's memoir in the early 1990s, he was assigned to the Major Case Squad along with Caracappa. Oldham was stunned that Caracappa, who had access to the department's most sensitive intelligence, would be best friends with a dubious character like Eppolito. That was Oldham's first clue that the Mafia might have made inroads into the NYPD.

When Casso told federal authorities about Caracappa and Eppolito's criminality, Oldham assumed investigations would be launched. When the detectives later retired to Las Vegas and bought homes in a luxury development across the street from each other, Oldham was outraged. The crooked cops had skated. Oldham decided to investigate the case himself - first as an NYPD detective and later from the U.S. attorney's office.

In 2004, Oldham's situation improved, as the book relates: "Finally ... a small group of detectives and investigators came together to work on the investigation. Oldham called them 'the cadre.' ... They were all determined to see that justice was done. All of the voluminous information Oldham had gathered over the years was examined anew. More evidence was uncovered. Compelling connections between 'the cops' and long-forgotten murders were unearthed. Even with the accumulated facts, Oldham knew the case needed someone inside the conspiracy ... to take the disparate strands of the case and pull them together. He needed a storyteller."

Oldham found him in "Downtown" Burt Kaplan, a colorful Jewish gangster who was one of the most notorious dealers in stolen goods in New York. It was Kaplan who first made contact with the two detectives; it was Kaplan who set them up with organized-crime figures, and it was Kaplan who ultimately turned on them and testified in court.

Of course, it shouldn't have taken until 2005 to convict Caracappa and Eppolito. Shortly after teaming up in the 1970s, they accumulated numerous Internal Affairs complaints, including cash stolen from arrestees and money missing from a homicide scene. When the nephew of crime boss Carlo Gambino was busted for attempting to set up a major heroin deal with an FBI undercover agent, agents searching the house discovered a confidential NYPD Intelligence Divisions file. The FBI ran the documents for fingerprints, and they matched Eppolito's.

"Eppolito had a long, contorted explanation for how his fingerprints had magically appeared on a police department intelligence document found in a Gambino's house," Oldham recalled. "I wasn't buying it."

After the two cops retired, Oldham continued to try and bring them down. He told his NYPD supervisor about the trail he'd followed and the evidence he had collected. "He didn't want to hear about it. He said the words slowly, carefully enunciating them. 'I do not want to hear about that case ever again. Understand?'" Oldham recalled. "Catching Caracappa and Eppolito would ... hurt the whole department. Certain people think cops go bad every day. This would just confirm it."

"The Brotherhoods" is the anti-"Sopranos." Instead of yarns about colorful mobsters who believe in family, honor and omert ... , the book provides a glimpse of the New Millennium Mafia: arrested mobsters who start singing as soon as the cuffs are on, and crime bosses who let the families of loyal soldiers doing time live in penury. The book is long and dense, and it would have benefited from the perspective and insight of other detectives in "the cadre." On the other hand, readers will find this an important and well-told story.

Thanks to Miles Corwin

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The Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia

Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia.

Reviewed by:

Miles Corwin

Solana Pyne

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