Normally, it’s an unpardonable sin for a wiseguy in good standing to sit down with the feds in a so-called proffer session. Mob prince John “Junior” Gotti did just that, sources tell Gang Land.

Also known as “Queen for a Day,” such sessions often precede a cooperation agreement and require defendants to confess their crimes, as well as significant offenses by others.

Sources say Gotti’s secret meeting with the feds occurred before his first trial last year. During the session, the Junior Don allegedly admitted taking part in undisclosed crimes with several mob associates before January 1998, when he was first hit with racketeering charges.

Gotti’s admissions during the secret session, which were alluded to in a letter filed by federal prosecutors two months ago, cannot be used against him unless he were to decide to take the stand in his own defense at his trial this summer.

Gotti mentioned his sit-down with the feds to some of his co-defendants at the time, but insisted that the brief meeting was an effort to establish his innocence, not to point his finger at anyone else, sources said.

“He said that once he realized the feds were looking for him to cooperate, he walked out,” a former member of the defense team said.

Whatever the substance of the meeting, it explains some of the stranger goings-on at Gotti’s two earlier trials, both of which ended in hung juries. Near the end of the second, defense lawyers and prosecutors agreed to a stipulation that Gotti had committed felonies with cohorts Anthony Amoroso and Michael McLaughlin. The agreement was entered into the record just before the prosecution began its cross-examination of Gotti’s younger brother, Peter, the last defense witness at the February trial.

The stipulation, announced by then prosecutor Michael McGovern, came after a brief sidebar in an effort to discredit testimony by Peter Gotti that the men whom the feds had labeled mob associates were his brother’s lifelong friends and did not have any felony convictions. The transcript of the sidebar is sealed.

Another tidbit regarding the alleged meeting emerged in April, when prosecutors Victor Hou and Miriam Rocah stated in court papers that Gotti had admitted to “criminal activity in which he and others were involved.” The assertion was part of the feds’ argument that grand jury subpoenas the prosecutors had issued for Peter Gotti and others were valid and should be honored.

In their letter, prosecutors sought to rebut defense arguments that the government had “created a false impression that Gotti admitted significant information about criminal activity. Gotti knows full well that such admissions do exist,” the prosecutors wrote, noting that they fully addressed Gotti’s “erroneous argument” in a separate sealed letter.

Gotti’s lawyer, Charles Carnesi, declined to comment about his client’s reputed proffer, citing an edict by Judge Shira Scheindlin to refrain from discussing the case. “But,” he said, “it should be as obvious to everyone as it is to me that if in fact he wanted to cooperate, the government would have been thrilled. Since it didn’t happen, he must have rejected that, and that’s why we’re going ahead to trial no. 3.”

Lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented Gotti at his first trial, refused to confirm or deny the meeting. “A year ago,” he said, “the government looked at John’s trial as an inquisition only, a slam dunk conviction. A year later, the government has been brought to its knees, so I’m not surprised that they would stoop to such despicable levels and leak such a thing.”

The account of the proffer session isn’t Junior’s only new headache. Gotti, who has negotiated, and then rejected, at least two plea deals with the government, has also been a giver and a taker when it came to the rival Bonanno family during the last two years, according to what two mob defectors have told the feds.

Last summer, according to one turncoat, Gotti gave his blessings to a plan by then-acting Bonanno boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano to order a family soldier to testify as a defense witness for Vinny Gorgeous at his murder and racketeering trial.

The plan went awry, sources said, when the mobster Dominick Cicale – the gangster Basciano had selected for the role – decided to cooperate with the feds and ended up testifying as a key prosecution witness at the recently concluded trial.

During discussions between Basciano and Gotti while both were housed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan last year, Junior told Vinny Gorgeous that his plan was permissible under modern interpretations of Mafia rules, according to what Cicale later told the feds.

In pressing a reluctant Cicale to agree to testify for him, Vinny Gorgeous spoke of Junior’s approval of the plan on behalf of the Gambino family, and cited a proffer that Junior had given the feds as proof of “the new rules we’re allowed to use to fight the government,” Cicale told the feds, according to sources familiar with his account.

Two weeks ago, prosecutors Hou and Rocah informed Gotti that Cicale was a potential witness in his upcoming trial. 1135 1092 1258 1103

A year before Junior reputedly spoke to Basciano about their cases, he solicited then-Bonanno boss Joseph Massino for guidance about fighting the crimes that Junior believed the feds were going to tag him with before he concluded his prison time for the 1998 indictment, to which Junior pleaded guilty in 1999.

“He reached out to Massino as an elder mob chieftain who had been a close friend of his father,” a source said. Among the advice Junior sought, the source said, was “whether the rules allowed him to take the witness stand in his own defense.”

Carnesi told Gang Land that even if his client had discussions or other communications with Basciano or Massino regarding ways of fighting his case, they wouldn’t hurt his chances at trial.

“I don’t find anything troubling about them,” Carnesi said. “I can understand a perfectly reasonable innocent connotation for the conversations, if they took place. Guys in jail have a common bond – beating the case and getting out. The idea that one guy bounces an idea off another guy doesn’t shock me. Also, who knows whether Vinny Basciano even said something like that? Or, if he did say it, if it was true.”

If Mr. Hou and Ms. Rocah can get Gotti’s reputed communications with both Bonanno leaders into evidence at his third racketeering trial this summer, however, they could undermine his stated defense that he eschewed his mob ties when he went to prison in 1999.

Before the prosecution even considers getting that into evidence, however, FBI agents with two squads and federal prosecutors from Manhattan and Brooklyn need to resolve a growing feud that has escalated to ridiculous proportions in recent months, sources say.

Both Massino and Cicale were developed by agents from the FBI’s Bonanno squad and the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, and both entities are resisting efforts by the FBI’s Gambino squad and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office to use the Bonanno defectors in the Gotti case, sources said. Neither the FBI nor the U.S. attorneys would comment.

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