(Facts checked)
You’ve got your story straight. You’ve spent months prepping to go undercover
and infiltrate the Italian-American mafia. You are no longer named Joseph Pistone and
from now on you’ll only answer to the name your crew calls you. You’ve got a fake driver’s license that
bears that name and you’ve got a swagger befitting a gangster. You know how to use that Mafia twang and say,
“How ya doin’?”and “fuhgeddaboudit” in just the right way. You are going to try and fool some of the
most dangerous criminals in the world and bring them down. That will mean seeing some disturbing things,
and as you move through this new life every day could be your last. This is the story of one of the biggest lies
the FBI ever told. The story of a man who was once known as Donnie
Brasco. Joseph “Joe” Pistone was the right fit
for an undercover cop who would infiltrate an Italian-American crime family. He was part Sicilian, grew up in New Jersey
where the mafia presence was strong, and so he had the background and knew the patois
of those gangsters. He looked the part, sounded the part, and
when the time came he was ready to be a “wise guy.” In fact, a much wiser guy than the wise guys
he worked with. His early life didn’t consist of petty crime
and fighting in the mean streets of New Jersey. He studied hard, attained a degree in anthropology
and later went to work for Naval Intelligence. It wasn’t until 1969 when he was 30-years
old that he started working for the FBI. Five years later he was moved to New York
where he joined the truck hijacking unit, with hijacking trucks being a big money-spinner
for the mafia. Sometimes the truck drivers were in on it,
too, and took payment and maybe a black eye for a pay-off. Hundreds of trucks were getting done over
and millions of dollars of items were being stolen. It didn’t really matter what the bounty
was, it could all be sold on. In 1974, when Pistone joined that unit, the
truck hijacking businesses was bringing in $4.2 million a year. Something had to be done. But it wasn’t the truck hijacking that made
Pistone a well-regarded name in the FBI, it was when he went undercover for the first
time and brought down a vehicle theft ring. 30 people were arrested and the FBI knew they
had a man they could use. It was 1976 when Pistone put his hand up and
said he was willing to go undercover again, but this time the assignment was about as
dangerous as could be. He said he’d infiltrate one of the “Five
Families” that ran New York city’s criminal underworld. That was the Bonanno crime family. He spoke Italian fluently, including the street
slang of gangsters. He’d grown up among them, had Sicilian heritage,
and as he’d proved, he could work well undercover. There really wasn’t a better man for the
job. He just needed to create a backstory, and
that meant everything, from fictional fights he had in high school and how much he loved
his grandmother’s “pasta con le sarde” and mouthwatering “cassata siciliana.” He had to know names in the Mafia and how
the organization worked. He had made-up past loves. He had been kicked around the tough streets
and that’s how he got into crime. His principle income was jewel thievery, and
if you’re a jewel thief you have to know a thing or two about jewels. This was a tricky part of the back story and
Pistone had to spend some time studying gemology. He passed with bright flying colors. His name was erased. He was expunged from history. There was no Joe Pistone now, only Donnie
Brasco, the jewel thief. It was intended that he’d stay this way
for six months, but as you’ll see, things didn’t quite work out that way. One day this man named Donnie turned up in
Little Italy. He frequented restaurants and hung out in
bars. He always seemed to have lots of cash on him,
and while he didn’t immediately tell the folks he met why this was, he did get particularly
friendly with a bar man at one place. Then he let it be known he had jewels and
he knew where he could get more jewels. He was useful to any criminal empire. With all the cash he had he was obviously
pretty good at his job. You have to think about how dangerous this
was. It wasn’t as if he was working in Alaska. He could have easily been spotted by someone
he knew and if met on the street and called “Joe” he was done for. To prevent anyone from letting the story out
only a few people in the FBI knew about the operation, while his co-workers just thought
he’d moved on some place. His own friends didn’t know where he’d
gone. The man was a ghost. He couldn’t be seen to be big time otherwise
someone would have already heard of him, but the act was that while he was small time he
could certainly get involved with bigger things and likely earn for a family. It actually took about six months before he
got a break and was introduced to someone from the Colombo crime family. There he started working for Jilly Greca and
his crew, an outfit that got most of their money from stealing and hijacking. This wasn’t really the higher echelons of
mafia crews, but it was a start. The funny thing is, because he was so undercover
the New York cops soon had a file on him. That file said he was a crook and a new addition
to the Greca crew named Don Brasco. Then he got another break and met a man with
a violent temper and a will to kill. That man was Anthony "Tony" Mirra and he was
part of the Bonanno crime family. Now things got serious, because Tony was known
for his temper. It’s thought he killed 30 to 40 people during
his criminal career. Brasco worked more closely with other members
of the family, including Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano and Benjamin "Lefty Guns"
Ruggiero. He developed a close friendship with the latter,
and this is how the many exploits of the mafia got back to the FBI. During this time his life was filled with
patches of boredom and loneliness. Months and years passed and he had no real
friends or anyone to love or confide in. It was a dangerous job, but one of the worst
aspects of working undercover was basically not being able to be you and enjoy unadulterated
emotions. When it came to the more dangerous side of
this life, Brasco was never involved in things like big shoot outs and he never had to “whack”
a guy. He just played the part, stayed in character,
and listened. Of course he had to witness violence, though. Unlike some undercover agents that would follow,
Brasco never lost sight of who he was. While he acted well, he was always aware that
he was an FBI agent and his friendships were not real. He might laugh and joke around with them and
the laughter wasn’t fake, but he also knew that one bad move would mean those guys laughing
with him would fix him a pair of cement boots and send him for a swim in the Hudson. He also had a wife and kids who depended on
him. They knew nothing about what he was doing
and he only got to see them once every few months. At one point he had a car trunk filled with
Christmas gifts and was about to go home to his family, but then he bumped into some of
his crew and they took him out on a wild night. He had to play the part. The guys in the crew thought Donnie was a
bachelor and would be spending Christmas alone in his room. They sympathized with the man. They even visited him at his room and brought
a surprise Christmas tree, after which they helped him decorate it. “Whatya gonna do, it’s Christmas time,
ba da bing ba da boom.” There was even one time when Brasco’s wife
had a near fatal car accident, and he had to go missing for several days. Upon returning he couldn’t show sadness
and had to make up a story as to where he had been. One of the scariest aspects of the job as
time went by was when he was summoned to a mob meeting. Every single time he showed up he wondered
if his real identity had been exposed and he would get whacked there and then. On another occasion he and Lefty were blamed
for messing up a job, and he could have been taken out for that, but instead they let him
off. Brasco ended up in Florida, where he ran quite
a successful operation. At this point the ill-tempered Mirra had just
got out of jail and discovered that Brasco was making a lot of cash. He demanded part of that, seeing as it was
him that gave him his start. This was also a troublesome time when lives
were on the line. But when he was alone with Sonny or Lefty
much of the time they just lived like normal friends. They didn’t always talk about Mafia stuff. You have to remember this went on for years
and years, and while movies or TV might depict Brasco’s life as being crime 24-hours a
day, it just wasn’t like that. Most of the time was spent sitting at home
watching TV or going to the bar and playing cards. Brasco didn’t know too much about the inner
workings of the crime family because he wasn’t a made man. You know what you need to know, is how the
Mafia dealt with things. They knew very well that in New York city
you are never more than a few feet away from a rat. From time to time things slipped, though,
and a big break for Brasco is when Sonny told him about three captains that had been whacked. They’d been told to come to a meeting and
when they got there they were shot by Lefty and other men. Sonny was now confiding in Brasco, which was
good…and bad. The downside to becoming a closer member of
the family was doing what family members did, and that was dealing in violence and sometimes
murder. Sonny said to Brasco, I need you to take out
a person, but you know what, I’m gonna try and make you a made man. You’ll be one of us. We’re going to make some serious money. He was now in too deep for his own good. One, because killing someone was too extreme
an act to follow, and two because now he was so close to Sonny he was a target for the
people he was supposedly warring against. He might get taken out both as a wise guy
and in the line of duty. It was too much. The FBI pulled him out. That aftermath was to say the least chaotic,
and at first Brasco’s old crew didn’t believe the truth. They thought this was some kind of wicked
lie, a trap laid by the FBI. They soon discovered it wasn’t a lie and
Donnie Brasco, their friend and associate, had never existed. Sonny was soon murdered for getting close
to Brasco and not unearthing the truth. Lefty ended up in prison. Mira went into hiding, but things weren’t
looking too good because the Bonanno family boss, one Joseph Massino, had ordered his
murder. A mafia solider named Joseph D'Amico did the
business in the end, shooting him a few times in the head. Ironically, D’Amico would also later become
an informant. As for what happened during the job, the friendships
he made, Pistone once said, “I had no sense of guilt. All during the course of the operation, I
knew it was a job.” He did say later, though, that he didn’t
want his old comrades to be killed. He only wanted them imprisoned. The Mafia put a $500,000 contract out on Pistone’s
life, and counter to what some people believe, he says it has never been rescinded. He and his family live with false names which
they change occasionally. No one knows where they are, and they certainly
stay away from locations where there is a Mafia presence. Time might have passed, but Pistone believes
there’ll be some big shot out there who wants to say he was the man that took down
the FBI’s most famous undercover cop. Looking for another great video from The Infographics
Show? Click this video to get more right now or
try out this video over here!
We need this with some vinny lines dubbed in
So that's how you say pistone, PISTO-NAY