Word: mobbing
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...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 you," says Pistone, 48, a tall, swarthy, bearded man with the build of an athlete...
...contract on Pistone's life, forcing him and his long-suffering family to live under an assumed name somewhere in New Jersey. Pistone, who left the FBI in 1986, is no longer protected by the agency but carries a .38-cal. pistol at all times. The Mob has reason to rage at the former agent: his daring double life was instrumental in gaining more than 100 federal convictions of organized-crime members. He was a key witness in the "pizza connection" case involving Sicilian heroin importers, as well as the 1986 Mafia commission trial in New York City...
...equal importance, Pistone exposed the degree to which Government crime- busting efforts have weakened the Mafia, says Ronald Goldstock, director of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. The Mob, which once ran thorough security checks on any stranger, simply lacked the "discipline and internal controls" to unmask the agent, he says...
...call of being exposed. In 1977, shortly after he had infiltrated a small gang of crooks attached to the Colombo family, two mobsters became suspicious that Pistone was a stoolie and demanded that he provide a criminal reference. Months before, Pistone had asked another FBI agent to instruct a Mob informant in Florida always to be ready to vouch for Donnie Brasco. But had the agent passed on the message? And if he had, would the informant remember? For several tense hours Pistone played cards with the rest of the gang, while a mobster checked out his story. Finally...
...simply remained himself, an Italian American who had grown up in New Jersey around neighborhoods where mobsters lived. He had a sense of their behavior and values. "I knew how to act natural so no alarms would go off," he says. So natural, in fact, that as a Mob hanger-on, he got close to Mafia Soldier Lefty Ruggiero, a neurotic worrier, chronically short of cash, who became Pistone's mentor in check-cashing scams and drug and gambling deals. Pistone also "felt a kind of kinship" with Dominick ("Sonny Black") Napolitano, a killer who kept pigeons on the roof...