The Wiseguys Culture

Former FBI agent Donnie Brasco is back with a lot to tell

Infiltrating the mob is no easy task, but Donnie Brasco, aka FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone, had gone in so far that he was almost a made guy in the family. After his first successful novel Donnie Brasco, was made into the movie starring Johnny Depp, Pistone is back with this nonfiction tale The Way of the Wiseguy.
Literally almost every question you would want to ask about a wiseguy sprawls through the pages of this book. It's better than reality TV, with an audio CD of some surveillance conversations with a real wise guy that tops it all off.
Pistone was an FBI agent for 17 years from 1969 to 1986. His most telling years as 'Donnie Brasco' - jewel thief - took place from 1976 to 1981.
His main in was "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero, and Brasco convinced gangsters of his role as an associate of the Bonanno family for six years. Brasco came within four months of becoming a wiseguy and the only FBI agent to be proposed for membership. He ate with mobsters and had several close ties to the Bonanno family, particularly Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano. He managed to stay out of trouble enough not to get whacked, and went to jail a few times while constantly taking mental notes of the wiseguy life, which he shares in this book.
After quite an audacious operation, he now lives under a secret identity in an undisclosed location.
The Way of the Wiseguy is a fun read and will give you some information that you will not believe. It is a first-hand account of the hows and whys, from gambling and loan-sharking, table manners and wiseguy nicknames. It is clearly not a gathering of information from other shelved texts. A book that will surely be used in college criminal justice courses, it's the real thing and probably the closest most people would want to get to a wiseguy.
Tandem had the pleasure of talking to Pistone from some unknown place.

How did you survive all these years?
"I survived all these years by having good street smarts and common sense."

Did this come from your growing up and what led to you becoming an FBI agent?
"I always wanted to be in law enforcement. When I went to college I got into Naval intelligence and spent a couple of years there. When that tour was up I took the FBI exam, as I figured if I'm going to be a law enforcer I might as well be with the best. So I took the exam and was lucky enough to pass. Twenty-seven years later..."

Are you still working for the FBI?
"I retired in 1996, but I still work for them as far as lecturing and teaching goes, but not in terms of assignments."

What happened when your cover was intentionally blown as Donnie Brasco?
"There came a period when there was a shooting war going on within the family, for control of the family. Fortunately at the time the side that I was on was winning the war, but the side I was on had killed three members of the opposition. We went for about six months after the war broke out, then the FBI felt it was getting too dangerous in that there were too many people being killed."

Were you at risk?
"Yeah, but the individuals I was with were the ones that were killing. So the cover was terminated to make the arrests and stop the war."

Was there ever any confusion about what you were doing?
"For me there wasn't, only because to be an undercover agent it's a different mindset. And to be a deep cover agent it is a total different mindset from the average police officer or average agent. You have to have a focus and know what you're doing and know why you're there, and never lose sight of that focus or the knowledge of why you're there. As long as you maintain that and the fact that it's an investigation, then you stay pretty much on track. Once you lose sight of that fact, that it's an investigation, and you become enamoured with the lifestyle, that's when it starts to get hazy. I wasn't enamoured with this lifestyle because I grew up in this type of environment and neighbourhood, so I knew wiseguys. I knew what it was about, so it wasn't just something new to me."

Do people just walk into this lifestyle of the wiseguy?
"No, it's not like you just step into it one day and decide you're going to do it. That's one thing that was pretty amazing about my story is that I wasn't part of that particular neighbourhood. But growing up in that environment, as I said before, is I was street smart. I knew what you do and what you don't do; when you talk to somebody and when you don't talk to somebody; when you walk away from conversation. They picked up on this and it's old news."

How did this book The Way of the Wiseguy come about?
"With all these shows that I have done over the years, I was always asked different questions about wiseguys and made a mental note of a lot of that. I figured I should answer all these questions in a book. It's a how and why book. Why wiseguys will kill you? Wiseguys and gambling; how wiseguys get made and how they get straightened out."

The book includes a CD of surveillance conversations. How did you choose from the many, I imagine, there are?
"These two conversations are about an individual who was trying to have me killed and they have what they call sit-downs. They are meetings for someone that has problems or beefs and these are conversations about what went down at the sit-down. This individual had said that I had stolen $250,000 from a drug deal and basically it was jealousy on his part. So these conversations were basically about what was going on at the sit-downs and how they were going down. If my side loses, I get killed, but my side won."

So, did you steal the money?
"(laughs) No. No, I sure didn't. The guy was jealous that I was with these others, making a lot of money and he wasn't in on it."

What are you working on now?
"I have another novel in the works. I'm also producing an FBI/Mob movie, and we're in the process of casting right now. It's based on a true story about three cousins. Two of them become mobsters and one of them becomes a legit guy in law enforcement. We have Val Kilmer so far as one of the leads, and hopefully they'll start shooting in late June."

You must have seen some pretty gruesome things?
"I never actually witnessed any murders, but I witnessed other stuff. It's all mental toughness when it comes down to it."

Were you ever scared?
"No not scared, because then you wouldn't be doing your job. You're always aware of what's going on and on guard, alert."

What will wiseguys think about this book?
"I think they'll get a kick out of it. We got some feedback that they thought it was worth the read."
For any wiseguy reading this, it will be like looking into a mirror. For the curious, it tells a high tale.

Donnie Brasco will be appearing at Chapters Woodbridge, East Woodbridge Centre, 3900 Highway #7, on Saturday May 1, at 1 p.m.

Publication Date: 2004-04-25
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3889