Word: code
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Army sergeant stationed in West Germany was approached by a Soviet agent code-named Misha. He reported the contact and was instructed to play along. Reassigned to the Army Intelligence Agency at Fort Meade, Md., the sergeant was twice sent by the Soviets to their Mexico City embassy. Along with $6,500 and a promise of a monthly $500 retainer, he was given a miniature tape recorder, secret writing paper and a deciphering code for microdot messages...
...Buscetta painted a picture of a 1980s-style Mafia that differs considerably from the all-in-the-family cliches of Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Today's mobster, in both Italy and the U.S., is greedier, meaner and less likely to respect the Mafia's internal code of honor than were the Mafiosi in the generation of his father's father (see box). Officials on both sides of the Atlantic consider Buscetta's break with the Mob a significant gain for law enforcement, which has thus far had only limited success in getting those...
Only hours earlier, Pope John Paul II had issued one of his strongest condemnations ever of organized crime. Visiting the southern Italian village of Paola, he called upon listeners to break "the tragic chain of vendettas" and abandon the Mafia's code of silence, "which binds so many people in a type of squalid complicity dictated by fear...
Italian officials were delighted by Buscetta's offer. But they were also skeptical, knowing that no high-level Mafioso was likely to violate omerta, the code of silence, and disclose secrets about the criminal organization. Palermo Deputy District Attorney Vincenzo Geraci was understandably surprised when he met Buscetta in Brazil last June and found him willing to tell what he knew. In their initial interview, Geraci recalled, Buscetta told the prosecutor, "I am not your adversary." A month later, after Buscetta had been extradited to Italy and assured that his family would be protected, he began to talk, said...
...Peasants who found a corpse with a hand chopped off knew that a petty thief had been punished. A body with severed genitals stuffed in his mouth meant that the dead man had "offended" the wife of a compagnie member. A missing tongue signified that someone had violated the code of omerta, or silence...