Narco Wars (2020) s02e01 Episode Script

1
♫ ♫
PRODUCER: My brother. Wassup?
DOPE BOY PAPI: Wassup, wassup?
Dope Boy Papi,
El Jefe, the big boss.
Dominican Republic is mine.
Anything that comes
and leaves outta here,
it needs to come through me.
DOPE BOY PAPI: I distribute
to New York and to Miami.
I use mules, and I use boats.
PRODUCER: Do you ever feel
guilty about selling drugs?
DOPE BOY PAPI: You never
feel guilty about making money.
PRODUCER: Do you think
drugs should be legalized?
DOPE BOY PAPI: It
will never be legalized.
That's how we make money.
PRODUCER: So, you prefer
it to be illegal, or?
DOPE BOY PAPI: Illegal.
MAN: Shake this square world
and blast off for Kicksville.
NIXON: (over PA) America's public
enemy number one is drug abuse.
NANCY: Just say no.
GEORGE: The mafia
is a major player in the
international drug underworld.
ANTHONY: But at
the end of the day,
it's all about the dollar.
It's all about the dollar.
REAGAN: (over PA) The American
people want the mob and its
associates brought to justice
and their power broken.
HARRIS: (over PA) There's
now an understanding that the
war on drugs was
an abject failure.
MAN: You have to stop
and ask yourself,
"How did we get here?"
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♫ ♫
ANGELA: We were so excited
every time daddy came home,
because daddy wasn't
really home a lot.
I was under the impression that
he worked for the CIA or the FBI,
and he was on these missions.
He wasn't tall, he was stocky.
But it wasn't fat,
he was all muscle,
and he had a punch that
you wouldn't believe.
He put up one of those
punching bags in the basement,
and I used to watch him,
and it would
just blow my mind.
How does the bag even get
back to him, he's so fast?
He was very strong.
Very strong.
When he hit you, he hit you.
My name is Angela Tucceri,
and I am the daughter
of Carmine Galante,
also known as "The Cigar".
(laughs)
BILL: Carmine Galante was,
far and away, the biggest
heroin kingpin in the world.
He developed a whole
system of smuggling tons of
heroin into the country.
CARMINE: Heroin trafficking
turned out to be the most
profitable venture that
the mafia went into.
ANGELA: He saw drugs as
his opportunity to almost
take over the world.
♫ ♫
RALPH: The apprentice
to the Bonanno family,
which is one of the five main
crime families in New York.
He was particularly
close to Joseph Bonanno,
who was the boss.
RALPH: Carmine Galante was
a street thug for the mob,
and he was ruthless,
which helped him rise in
the mafia organization.
He was just the kind of
guy they were looking for.
ANGELA: I do have to say this,
what he did might be wrong,
but he excelled in it.
RALPH: In the 50s,
Joe Bonanno sent him
to Montreal to organize
the rackets there.
It's not really
that well known,
but Canada became a big
nurturing place for the mafia,
and for organized crime
and drug trafficking.
Border controls were relaxed,
and it was easy to
bring in shipments of
drugs from Europe,
particularly the French
speaking parts, like Montreal.
MAN: Montreal is the
largest city in Canada.
Its great seaport and
industry gives the city a
transcontinental economy.
RALPH: The fact that Bonanno
dispatched him to Canada
showed the trust
that they had in him.
CARMINE: Galante was termed the
"Foreign Minister" of Bonanno.
He headed Bonanno's operation
of drug trafficking, gambling,
loan sharking, etc.
and from there,
he made a lot of
money for Bonanno.
ANGELA: Montreal, to me,
was a very glamorous city
at the time.
It never felt anything
but a vacation to me.
He had in his passport
"occupation", and it said,
"restaurant owner".
So, even when I was younger,
I knew that daddy owned
a restaurant in Canada.
It never dawned on me that,
"Oh, this is a great
place for dad to start
bringing in his drugs."
It just, you know,
I didn't know any of that.
RALPH: The French Connection
really grew out of World War II,
because the French
would arrange shipments
through Turkey,
where opium was prevalent,
to processing
plants in Marseille.
From there, French
organized crime brought it
into the US, through Canada.
MAN: Whose stuff is it?
Is it any good?
WOMAN: It's very good.
REPORTER: The commodity
of this marketplace is
the narcotic drug, heroin,
packaged in small white bags.
There are $3 bags and $5 bags.
REPORTER 2: What is happening
on this street corner is part
of an international
multimillion dollar
a year business.
CARMINE: The United States
was a pure market for heroin,
and the Mafia saw that this
was the fast way of making
a lot of money.
WOMAN: Take it now.
Take it down, that's all.
♫ ♫
CARMINE: Present at this
meeting were members of the
American Mafia, including
Joe Bonnano, Carmine Galante.
On the Sicilian side,
among others,
there was Lucky Luciano,
Tommaso Buscetta.
They put a plan together
to make a lot of money.
The way to make a lot of
money was through drugs.
RALPH: That meeting
established the contours of
the drug trafficking
between Italy and the US,
how it would be divided up,
and laid out the
groundwork of cooperation
between the Sicilian Mafia
and the American Mafia.
RALPH: The Sicilians had no
criminal records in America,
and they were an
unknown quantity to
American law enforcement.
CARMINE: As the underboss
of the Bonanno family,
Galante took it upon
himself to mention to the
young mafiosi in Sicily,
"You guys can come to America.
You can form your own crews.
You'll be under my direction,
and you're gonna make
a lot of money with me."
ANGELA: He knew that this
was gonna be his big shot.
But they wanted him
put away and they succeeded.
(door slams)
(overlapping chatter)
FIORDILINO: Carmine Galante's
been in jail for nearly
a third of his life.
There's a
Sicilian term that says,
"He was a dog
that had no leash."
FIORDILINO: My name
is Fransesco Fiordilino,
and in 2003,
in federal court,
I pled out to
arson, gambling,
distribution of drugs,
murder, attempted murder,
conspiracy to murder,
all while being part of
Bonanno crime family.
Carmine Galante's ego was
bigger than all of New York,
and he wants to be the top.
He wants to be the guy.
CARMINE: While in jail,
Galante thought a lot about
his greatest ambition
to become a boss,
to become somebody
that he wasn't.
At the time he went to jail,
he was the underboss
of the Bonanno family.
But, being the way he was,
that wasn't
good enough for him.
RALPH: Carmine Galante had
problems from an early age,
and he had a long history
of run‐ins with the law,
which ended up sending
him to Sing Sing,
where his psychology was
evaluated for the first time.
RALPH: And they found
he had an IQ of 90,
which is below average, a
psychopathic personality.
Even then, he was known to
fly into unaccountable rages.
So, the warning signs
were clearly there.
ANGELA: My dad told
me this story once,
that his father
tried to sell him.
He was so appalled.
I'm sure that that made him
get in with the wrong company.
Even at the early stages,
he feared nothing,
and I think that that
was a big part of him
becoming who he was.
RALPH: In '62, jail offered
many opportunities to keep up
with other mobsters in prison
who he could consult with,
so it was
not a huge impediment to
his criminal business.
But he had to bide his time,
and he couldn't be thinking
anything except that
it was his rightful due to
be the next boss.
CARMINE: Galante got
out after 12 years of
his 20‐year sentence.
He was obviously on parole.
He had to abide by
certain conditions,
such as not associating
with criminal cohorts.
But he was hungry to
get back into the game and
enforce his authority.
CARMINE: He wanted to come out
and make more money and be the
king of the heroin
trafficking activities between
Sicily and the United States.
FIORDILINO: In 1972, in
New York, the French Connection,
based out of Marseille,
gets broken up.
RALPH: New York in the 70s
was really downtrodden.
The city was in terrible
financial shape,
a lot of hopelessness
in the streets.
And that, of course,
fostered drug addiction.
And a lot of people
felt helpless and were
driven to drugs.
MAN: Well, I shoot, maybe,
ten bags a day, three,
three times a day.
REPORTER: And how much
does that cost you?
MAN: Well, it varies
from 20 to $25 a day.
RALPH: It was a very ready
market for Galante's heroin.
FIORDILINO: Carmine started
networking all over the
United States with some of his
old drug dealing friends and had
a little walk and talk about
what they're gonna do.
RALPH: He needs to put
together a new crew of people.
The question is, how can he
be assured of their loyalty,
and that they will defend
him and not turn on him?
DIMATTEO: So he put a
crew together from Sicily,
and they were younger guys.
My name's Frank DiMatteo.
I was part of the Mafia
crime family in the 1970s.
Sicilians always
thought they were better,
'cause they think
they're the root of
the Sicilian Mafia,
and that they do things
properly and we don't.
So, yeah, of course, they
think they're better than us.
And they still do.
They did then, they still do.
To them, we're wild cowboys.
That's what they
called us, "cowboys".
RALPH: One of the sources for
his young Sicilian recruit was
his parent's hometown of
Castellammare del Golfo.
It's very picturesque,
very colorful,
stronghold of the Mafia.
Joe Bonanna came from there,
which gave Galante
his sense of security.
ANGELA: My father should
have been born in Sicily.
That's how Sicilian
my father was.
He trusted Sicilian people more
than he trusted anyone else,
because like the mob,
you're all intertwined,
you're all a family.
GREENBERG: The Sicilians,
and that would include my
father‐in‐law, were
described as Zips.
And I don't even know what
Zips mean, but I can tell you,
that has a connotation
that gets my Irish up.
It's like saying the
Sicilians are the Dalits
of some caste system,
you know what I mean?
The word is
inherently disgusting,
and I don't accept that.
So, my name is
Howard Greenberg.
I'm a criminal
defense attorney.
And once upon a time,
I was married to the mob.
I remember meeting them at
my house when I lived in
Stonebridge with my then wife.
They were guests of
my father‐in‐law,
and that really was it.
One of 'em, Cesare Bonventre,
the government alleged
was a bodyguard for Galante,
who stuck to him like glue.
Flashy, in terms of
the jewelry, sunglasses,
and had an appearance straight
out of central casting,
if you ask me.
Along the way,
I also met Amato and he was
also a bodyguard.
Physically, I would
describe him, sort of,
like a teenager, you know.
Salvatore Catalano was
Galante's street boss,
and he had a
nondescript appearance.
He, for all intents
and purposes,
could have been a baker.
Never had anything much,
if anything, to say.
He was as quiet
as a church mouse.
So, he could've been either
a baker or a church mouse.
If they were books,
the Sicilian Mafiosi
would be hardcover,
first edition, first printings.
American wise guys
would be cheap second‐hand
versions of paperbacks.
CARMINE: They had
a common mission,
bring the heroin from
Sicily to the
United States at a great scale,
so we can all make money.
The Sicilians made contact
with the remaining members of
the French Connection,
who were still around,
and take them to Sicily
and form their own labs.
And so, Galante, the people
that he had here in New York,
the connections that
he had in Sicily,
here was now the Sicilian
Connection that replaced the
French Connection.
RALPH: But, a street boss for
the Bonanno family who crossed
the Galante faction, and
opposed his foray into drugs,
was an Italian Mafioso
named Peter Licata.
Licata was
against drugs, by all accounts.
DIMATTEO: Street bosses
are a dime a dozen,
but everybody knew
Carmine Galante would kill you,
if didn't go along
with his game.
He wasn't a negotiator,
he was a junk dealer.
That's where he
makes his money.
The guy comes out of jail and
you wanna tell him that you
don't think it's a good idea.
Really?
Okay. So, you gotta go.
(honking)
RALPH: Knickerbocker Avenue in
Brooklyn was a stronghold of
the Bonanno family, one of
the five mafia crime families.
There was a so‐called
street boss, Peter Licata.
And Licata thought drug
dealing would provide a
problem for the family, and
he said to his underlings,
"First deal,
deal at wholesale,
then you'll deal at retail,
and then it'll
end up destroying the
entire Italian community."
FIORDILINO: He was
not thinking at that time
that he was ruffling some
feathers by saying something
so in your face to somebody
who might just act on it.
'Cause if he did, he probably
wouldn't have said it.
DIMATTEO: He was giving
Carmine's guys a hard time,
and that was not a
smart move on his part.
FIORDILINO: One night,
Licata went home,
he went to his family,
guys came up there, boom.
CARMINE: Peter Licata was
gunned down and murdered.
Lo and behold, who takes
over as street boss of
Knickerbocker Avenue?
Salvatore Catalano.
RALPH: The message
was unmistakable,
don't get in Galante's way.
CARMINE: There was a lot
of upheaval in the Bonanno
family at that time.
Joe Bonanno, the former
boss of the family, had retired.
And the boss of the Bonanno
family, at this time,
was Philip Rastelli.
But Rusty Rastelli
was in jail,
and Galante saw this vacuum.
He figured,
"I'm gonna step in here.
He's out of the picture.
This is what I've really
hoped for all my life,
to be the boss of the family."
At the same time,
Carlo Gambino dies, and
word got out that he not only
wanted to become boss
of the Bonanno family,
but he also wanted to
tackle the Gambino family,
because they had the
most powerful family in
New York at that time.
RALPH: The Gambinos had
a strength of about 1,000
members in New York
in the mid‐70s,
as opposed to
the Banannos, only about 200.
When Carlo Gambino dies,
there's clearly a tectonic
shift in the leadership
of the Mafia in New York
at that time.
So, that must've appealed
to Galante as an opportunity.
DIMATTEO: In his mind,
he wanted to
be the boss of bosses.
But, guy's a psychopath
in the first place.
The guy's not a normal guy.
And he wasn't
following any rules,
so it was gonna get dirty.
RALPH: There were
a series of attacks on
Gambino family businesses,
pizza parlors
and other businesses.
CARMINE: A lot of these
pizzerias wound up being
burned to the ground.
Galante said, "Now I'm
gonna set up pizzerias.
And from these pizzerias,
I'm gonna conduct the heroin
trafficking activities."
ANGELA: My father started
opening up pizza restaurants.
I remember he opened
one up not far from my
house on Broadway.
Why he chose pizza places,
I'll never know.
But it was nice getting
free pizza all the time.
PISTONE: Using pizza parlors
made a lot of sense because
they had 'em throughout the
United States and they don't
draw a lot of attention
from law enforcement.
My name is Joseph D. Pistone,
Special Agent of the FBI.
I was undercover in
the Bonanno crime family,
and my undercover name
was Donnie Brasco.
Pizza parlors
was a perfect idea.
Perfect way to run
your cash through,
perfect way to
import the heroin.
CARMINE: The supplies from
Italy were being shipped to
them in containers
that contained tomato cans,
olive cans, pasta.
PISTONE: They'd have false
bottoms on the olive oil cans,
and have the heroin
on the bottom,
and then the olive oil on top.
PISTONE: I think it was,
"We're the big dogs,
and if we wanna
take over something,
we're gonna take it over.
You don't have the
ability to step in and
stop us from doing it."
HAROLD:
Discreetly as possible.
Just kinda keep it low.
HAROLD: Our office
received information,
from one of our local airlines,
that one of their station
managers located in the
Caribbean was contacted by a
drug trafficking organization,
and they enquired if
they could put suitcases
on a flight to Atlanta.
We felt like there were some
ramp agents here in Atlanta,
that were involved
in a conspiracy.
We set up surveillance.
We saw a ramp worker
approach the flight.
This ramp worker was not
scheduled to work the flight,
nor was he scheduled to work
the international concourse.
Alright, gentleman,
the bag has been ripped.
They have it on top
of the tug pulling the
first luggage cart.
They're putting
everything else in a can.
OFFICER: That's it,
right there, right?
HAROLD: Yep.
That's it. He's got it.
Alright, he's pulling
into the main terminal,
so everybody look alive.
OFFICER: There he is.
OFFICER: (over radio) Hey,
have you got any visual yet?
HAROLD: Roger.
He is putting it in the
vehicle at this time.
OFFICER: (over radio)
So, it's been delivered,
delivery's complete?
RALPH: The Mafia had no
shortage of collaborators,
and they found collaborators
at Alitalia Airlines.
They had a baggage handler
who was in on it,
would put the suitcases
aboard the flight.
On the other end,
when the flight landed,
two trusted baggage handlers
would remove the suitcases and
send them on their way
to their destination,
and it didn't attract
any attention.
Those Alitalia suitcases
were worth millions
and millions of dollars,
because the heroin could
be compactly fit in.
So, the incentive was huge.
That's what
increased the appetite
of people like Galante,
that the profits to
be made were extraordinary.
PISTONE: He probably
was grating on Rastelli,
who was in jail,
how Galante was
running the family,
and how he was keeping
all the drug profits.
DIMATTEO: Galante believed
he should be the boss.
And he wasn't kicking up,
but it's a pyramid.
The boss, underboss,
consigliere, captains.
Everybody pays up.
The big guy gets everything.
That's how this thing works.
So, if you're making
trillions of dollars,
you're supposed
to give me my end,
but you didn't give it.
ANGELA: One time,
we went to Florida,
stayed in a hotel.
He was just being
watched constantly,
and all of a sudden,
in the middle of the night,
pounding on the door,
people on the balcony.
It was, like, it was insane.
You'd think they were
taking down, you know,
an army of people,
and it was just my dad.
And when they arrested him,
it was, to me, it was a joke.
PISTONE: Of course, with parole,
you're not supposed
to associate with other
known Mafia members.
But he did violate the parole.
REPORTER: Sir, can you tell me
why you're hiding like that?
(overlapping chatter)
REPORTER: Sir, can you tell me
why you're hiding like that?
PISTONE: Carmine Galante chose,
very shrewdly,
a good lawyer,
who had a long history of
clashing with the establishment,
going back to the
Senator Joseph McCarthy days.
Very powerful lawyer,
very well connected.
ROY: Everything
they've said is totally
incorrect and inaccurate.
REPORTER: You believe
they're not treating your
client fairly, then?
ROY: Pardon me?
No, I just said, it's
just a total publicity stunt,
or all of you
wouldn't be here, right?
REPORTER:
What're you doing here today?
ROY: I'm a lawyer.
RALPH: He became a very
sought‐after criminal lawyer.
Very successful in getting
his clients sprung.
GREENBERG: My personal
opinion of Roy Cohn
was that he was sick,
demented,
and in many ways,
worse than the criminals
he represented,
because he
fashioned the pretense
of being their advocate,
when the truth be told,
he was no better than they were.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Ernie, get out!
GREENBERG: He did
not play by the rules.
PHOTOGRAPHER:
Hey, Ernie, come on.
RALPH: 1978, Carmine Galante
goes back to prison
for violating parole.
They should have held
him there, clearly,
because he was consorting
with criminal associates,
violating parole.
But Roy Cohn got him out
of prison in record time.
PISTONE: So, he got
let out early '79.
How that happened,
I don't know.
RALPH: He became very cocky.
And amazingly, he goes on
60 Minutes, and his lawyer,
Roy Cohn, gets to interview
him and present this simple
Italian man, who likes only
to be growing tomato vines.
CARMINE: I'm
going to the country.
ROY: Good, what're
you gonna do when you get
to the country?
CARMINE: Well, I mean, I
planted peppers last week,
and now I'm gonna
plant tomatoes.
RALPH: And this completely
phony picture of this
mob boss is ludicrous.
ROY: You think that had any
influence on the federal judge
when he held that
you were right,
and the parole
commission was wrong?
CARMINE: I think so,
I think so.
ROY: He thinks the farmer ought
to be able to seed, right?
CARMINE: I think so.
I mean, it's very well
known that that's what I do.
DIMATTEO: When he made those
stupid moves on 60 Minutes,
act like an old man,
it don't work.
You ain't fooling nobody, man.
Forget about you
talking about tomatoes,
wear an old hat,
ripped sweater.
You can't do this.
You can't go public.
It don't work that way.
You're not supposed to that.
CARMINE: He had his own rules,
his own ways of doing things.
He was earning money, he
was also skimming money.
But the Mafia operates
to make money,
and in order to make money,
you have to follow the rules.
If you don't abide
by the rules,
there are repercussions.
RALPH: July 12th, 1979 was
a very hot day in New York.
And a Cadillac was rumbling
its way down the streets of
Bushwick, Brooklyn.
There was a lot of
street life going on.
It was a typical
day in Bushwick.
This Cadillac makes its way
down Knickerbocker Avenue,
and stops outside Joe & Mary,
Italian‐American Restaurant,
run by cousins of
Carmine Galante.
And Galante, who was
well‐known there,
made his way to the back, and
there was a backyard garden.
The bodyguards he had
taken with him that day were
Cesare Bonventre
and Baldo Amato.
And the mood was set for
a relaxing afternoon.
(overlapping chatter)
(sizzle)
(car doors closing)
(footsteps)
(sizzle)
(overlapping chatter)
(gun cocks)
(gunshots)
(shotgun blast)
DISPATCHER: (over radio)
13‐8‐61, 13‐8‐61.
BILL: I was in an unmarked
police car by myself,
and I happened to be just a
couple of blocks away from
Knickerbocker Avenue, when
I hear this job come over.
DISPATCHER: (over radio)
785, no record, NCIC.
ELLEN: Shortly before
3:00 this afternoon,
a blue Chevy pulled up
here in front of
Joe & Mary's restaurant.
Three men got out, wearing
ski masks, armed, shotguns,
automatic weapons.
BILL: And as I get there,
I run into the backyard.
I'm the first detective there,
there was maybe three cops.
I see the dead bodies.
MICHAEL: There are multiple
gunshot and shotgun wounds.
REPORTER: And as a
result of those wounds,
would you say the death was
instantaneous on both parts?
MICHAEL: It would appear that
the death was very rapid.
MAN: Okay, let's go.
Out of the way.
WOMAN: Get out of the way!
ANGELA: My mother called me,
screaming "They killed him,
they killed him,
they killed him."
My mother was destroyed.
She was just destroyed,
'cause she loved him.
She never stopped loving him.
She loved this man.
It amazed me, but it was true.
It was almost surreal,
the whole thing.
I don't think he thought
he would ever die.
He's got that God complex.
He just didn't think
anything could ever,
ever happen to him.
I was very surprised he
wasn't killed much sooner,
and that's probably why I
was so shocked when he died,
because now you don't
expect it anymore,
'cause it didn't happen
for such a long time.
Then there was the wake,
which was a joke.
It was a zoo.
Reporters, bah‐bah‐bah.
RALPH: For the FBI, it was a
big mystery why he was hit,
who was the killer.
And that had to be
pieced together.
FIORDILINO: There
was no love lost.
When he passed away, there
was 40 people at his funeral.
There's a reason for that,
nobody liked him.
RALPH: Carmine Galante
was front page news in the
New York Times.
But the big question was, what
about Bonventre and Amato?
That's the question that the
police grappled with later,
and one said,
"It was raining bullets
and they didn't get wet".
So, how did they
avoid getting mowed down
in that scene of mayhem?
REPORTER: Good evening.
Two men walked into
the Brooklyn DA's office
this afternoon.
The police have been looking
for them ever since
Carmine Galante was
gunned down earlier this month.
Cesare Bonventre and
Baldo Amato were having lunch
with Galante when the
hitmen broke in and killed him.
BILL: They had nothing to
help with any investigation.
They took the fifth, so they
were totally useless as far as
the investigation went.
They were supposedly
innocent witnesses to it.
But they didn't know
I spoke Italian,
and there were some
remarks being said,
"Watch what you
say to this guy",
and everything, in Italian.
So, I knew they were
not gonna level with me.
CARMINE: Not only did they
see Cesare Bonventre and
Baldo Amato show up,
but Salvatore Catalano.
That really piqued
our interest,
because one of the suspects
was heard coming into the
place being mentioned
by the name "Sal".
CARMINE: As a result, it was
suspected that Sal Catalano
also participated in the
murder of Carmine Galante.
PISTONE: Galante put a lot
of trust in Cesare and Baldo.
They had to be on the set up.
And they saw the opportunity,
they figured they're gonna
make a bigger piece of the pie
with Galante out of the way,
so they snatched it.
PISTONE: They were definitely
in on the conspiracy
from the get‐go.
And also, Cesare Bonventre
got up to Capo,
he became the captain
in the family.
And Sal Catalano became
the boss of Sicilians.
DIMATTEO: All three of them were
100% offered a better deal.
I think it was like an
offer you couldn't refuse.
RALPH: There were many clues.
One was that the boss
of the Bonanno family,
Phil Rusty Rastelli,
got an excessive number of
visits in prison before the hit,
and that was pretty telling.
BILL: It was surveillance
of the Ravenite Social Club.
And when a call came over
about Galante being killed,
they started filming
everybody coming and going.
PISTONE: The Ravenite was
a Gambino social club.
And after the hit went down,
a guy by the name of
Bruno Indelicato shows up,
and he's seen talking with
the underboss of the
Gambinos at the time.
RALPH: Bruno Indelicato
seemed to be getting quite
some attention outside the club.
And later, they put it
together that, perhaps,
he had something to do
with the killing of Galante and
was being congratulated.
PISTONE: So, right there,
it shows you that the Gambinos
sanctioned it, and if the
Gambinos sanctioned it,
all the other bosses
sanctioned it.
CARMINE: The authority to
assassinate Carmine Galante
had to be authorized by
the so‐called "Commission"
of the Mafia.
RALPH: It had to have
been some kind of
high‐level decision,
because bosses, or underbosses,
don't get whacked on a whim
by some lower soldier, or capo.
It's a Commission
decision usually.
CARMINE: He had done
things against the Mafia rule.
They had to make an
example of Galante.
It was a daylight assassination
to send a message that,
"We are the ones who rule.
The rules are
not to be broken".
BILL: Once I started
the investigation of
the death of Galante,
I kept winding up
in a pizzeria after pizzeria.
The Mafia at that time
was considered involved in
bookmaking and possession
of stolen property,
and all that stuff.
But I don't think anybody
really knew how involved they
were in the importing of
drugs into the country.
RALPH: The killing of Galante
was the key to opening up this
vast drug conspiracy
that became known as
the Pizza Connection.
It became unimaginably
important in shifting the
focus of the FBI from
individual cases to a broader
perspective of prosecuting
drug organizations.
It was really the linchpin
to a vast revolution in
law enforcement, not only
in the United States,
but in Italy and
around the world,
in terms of awareness of the
international drug conspiracy.
ANGELA: He followed
the American dream,
at least what his mind thought
was the American dream.
You start at the bottom
and you work your way up.
Then, eventually, you're gonna
be at the top, and he was.
He just went about
it the wrong way.
Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.