Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Benjamin Ruggiero -- "Lefty Guns" to the mobsters he hung around with in New York City's Little Italy -- always remembered a conversation. No one knew that better than FBI Undercover Agent Joseph D. Pistone as he sat with Lefty, his Mafia chief and partner, in Nathan's in Miami Beach one morning in 1980. Several months before, Pistone had borrowed a white yacht from a fellow agent for an oceangoing party to impress Lefty and his Mafia pals. A girlfriend's rich brother had provided the boat, Pistone explained. Now an unhappy Lefty was looking at a page of TIME...
...closest Pistone came to being unmasked and "whacked" (killed) during the five years that he posed as Jewel Thief Donnie Brasco with the Bonanno and Colombo crime families. When he emerged from under cover in 1981, he was closer than any previous outsider to the inner sanctum of the Mafia...
...upcoming book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia (New American Library; $18.95), written with Richard Woodley, reveals the full extent of his dangerous voyage into the underworld. Pistone lived with mobsters, gained their trust and came close to being initiated as a wise guy -- a "made" Mafioso. He helped arrange business deals between crime families in different parts of the country and was the subject of three Mob-style tribunals, or "sit-downs," any of which could have resulted in a contract on his life. "In the Mafia, it's always someone you know real well who kills...
...headline in the daily El Tiempo seemed to say it all: ONCE AGAIN THE MAFIA MAKES A FOOL OF COLOMBIA. The paper was denouncing the release from prison last week of Billionaire Jorge Ochoa Vasquez, 38, reputedly a leader of a crime cartel that supplies 80% of the cocaine consumed in the U.S. Ever since Ochoa was arrested at a roadblock on Nov. 21, Washington and Bogota had been negotiating over his extradition to the U.S., where he is wanted on drug trafficking charges...
...underscore his high-minded intentions, he calls his book a fable. This is somewhat misleading, since there are no animals that talk like people but plenty of human characters who sound feral. A Mafia bill collector: "You either got $220 for me or I take your f------ ear home with me." An unwed teenage mother: "I waited to have a baby until I was 15. That's a long time. From eleven to 15 waitin' to have a baby." A slumlord: "The original reason I went to Dobermans was that I fell in love with their teeth. I thought they...