Don’t Buy Into Story of Mob-Terrorist Collaboration

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The Associated Press recently moved a story out of Washington that attempted to conjure up fears that greedy New York wiseguys might peddle weapons of mass destruction to followers of Osama bin Laden looking to launch terrorist attacks on American soil.

Dated October 1, the story ran under a scary headline: “Feds Worry That Terrorists, Mobsters Might Collaborate.” Its impact however, was that of a report dated April 1 — April Fools’ Day.

Six knowledgeable Gang Land sources on both sides of the law all agreed that the story was hogwash, with only a couple expressing the caveat that “anything is possible.”

Even though it has been well established that mobsters live to make money any way they can, a New York FBI spokesman, Jim Margolin, said that in the five years since September 11, 2001, the FBI has uncovered “no evidence of any links between the mob and international terrorist groups.”

A former chief of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force, Edward McDonald, said: “I don’t see any of the five families authorizing anything like what is being suggested — no matter how desperate they become. As a practical matter, they would consider any involvement with terrorists too risky, given all the government heat on terrorism and a fear that terrorists could not be trusted.”

Two totally diverse sources — a son of an incarcerated mobster, who noted that Lucky Luciano helped the Allied effort during World War II, and a retired FBI agent, who worked on a squad that nailed the aforementioned wiseguy — each cited love of country in ripping the story as nonsense.

“I would find it hard to believe that American mobsters would knowingly assist any terrorist group. These guys are actually somewhat patriotic,” the former FBI agent said.

The manager of media relations for the Associated Press, Jack Stokes, said via e-mail that a contract study produced recently for the Pentagon “warned that the potential for organized crime assisting terrorists is growing.The top two FBI officials on the subject are on the record as saying it is a concern.”

One such patriot, Genovese underboss Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano, whom we told you about last month, was released from a federal halfway house last week and sent home to serve out the final month of his 15-year sentence under house arrest. Benny Eggs, who at 85 suffers a host of ailments and is nearly blind, flew tail gunner on 33 bombing missions over Europe and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Another is legendary 86-year-old Genovese capo Matthew “Matty the Horse” Ianniello, who recently pleaded guilty to labor racketeering in a plea deal that he hopes will enable him to spend his last days at home in Old Westbury instead of at a federal prison.

His plea bargain calls for Matty the Horse to ultimately receive between 18 and 24 months and forfeit $1 million for using his control of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents 15,000 city school bus drivers, to shake down the owners of bus companies between 1997 and 2005.

Ianniello, a corporal in the Sixth Army, was an artillery gunner in the Philippines between 1943 and December 1945. He was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism for saving dozens of lives when his unit was fired on by a U.S. machine gun installation. He snaked his way through the friendly fire zone, crawled into the machine gunner’s pit, and alerted the installation of its deadly mistake, according to an Ianniello attorney, Nicholas Kaizer, who used those facts to win his client’s release on a $5 million bond when he was arrested last year.

Ianniello, who was awarded a purple heart and survived shrapnel wounds in grenade attacks, also lived to tell about a fatal attack much closer to home 25 years after World War II.

In the early morning hours of April 7, 1972, Ianniello was seated at his seafood eatery in Little Italy, Umberto’s Clam House, when Crazy Joe Gallo was shot to death as he celebrated his 43rd birthday with his wife, her daughter, and a small group of friends.

Matty the Horse, whose mob moniker derived from his stocky 6-foot, 220-pound frame, isn’t mentioned in any of the police reports of the shooting, but according to the NYPD’s detective chief at the time, Albert Seedman, Ianniello was in the place when Gallo was attacked.

As the Gallo party was enjoying its second round of shrimp, scungilli, and clams, Crazy Joe was shot and mortally wounded. He staggered outside.

With Gallo dying on the corner of Hester and Mulberry streets, his bodyguard stuck a pistol in Ianniello’s face and threatened to kill him for setting up his boss.

“You think I’m crazy to let this happen in this place?” Matty the Horse stammered. “I don’t know nothing.”

Ianniello, who had opened Umberto’s Clam House two months earlier — over the years, it has been in the names of various Ianniello brothers — knew an awful lot about owning and operating restaurants, bars, and topless clubs in Manhattan, including when to keep his mouth shut. He left before police arrived.

A 1975 NYPD Organized Crime Control Bureau report found that he controlled more than 80 Manhattan bars and restaurants, primarily in Midtown, through a business network that included holding companies, a talent agency, an interior decorating firm, a garbage collecting company, and vending machine companies.

“You don’t run a bar and grill or sex establishment between 34th and 59th streets from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River without Matty having a piece of the action,” an NYPD mob expert told the New York Times in 1977.

A close Ianniello associate at the time, according to the Times, was John Mink, an old Army buddy who joined the NYPD when the war ended and retired in 1966 as a captain, according to the Times account.

***

Michael Franzese, the Yuppie Don who quit the mob in the late 1980s and now makes a living talking about it, had nearly 10 million good reasons to chuckle last week when he told Gang Land that he hoped to be to able pay his restitution and fine during his lifetime.

Franzese, 52, was ordered to make restitution of $10 million and pay a $35,000 fine when he pleaded guilty 20 years ago. According to court records, Franzese owes $9,972,120 in restitution and fines, plus interest that Gang Land couldn’t begin to try to calculate.

At his set rate of $500 a month, Franzese would have to live another 1,666 years — give or take a few years — to pay it off. That’s even longer than Methuselah, the legendary biblical figure, or the Yuppie Don’s legendary old man, Colombo underboss John “Sonny” Franzese, who’s still trucking at 89.

***

Meanwhile, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia is still trying to decide when and how best to dispose of the pending racketeering charges against mob prince John “Junior” Gotti, whose third trial stemming from the 1992 shooting of Curtis Sliwa ended in a mistrial two weeks ago.

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at ganglandnews.com.


The New York Sun

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