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THE BUREAU
After the Giacalone fiasco, relations between the FBI and the
U.S. Attorney's office and other state and local law enforcement agencies were strained.
Bruce Mouw, head of the Bureau's efforts to bring the Gambino family leadership to
justice, was becoming concerned that there was a high-level mole involved in the case who
was keeping Gotti informed about investigations and possible indictments. Consequently,
the Bureau kept it cards increasingly close to its vest -sometimes with alarming
consequences.
The FBI efforts were mostly focused on getting wiretap evidence.
Somewhere, Gotti who was running this huge crime family of allegedly 3,000 member would
have to have business meeting about its operations. The challenge was to find out where
these meetings were taking place and plant bugs to record the evidence of criminal
operations.
Gotti was well aware of the FBI goal and took many steps to protect himself and his
lieutenants from wiretaps. During the week, Gotti had set up headquarters in New York
City's Little Italy in Neil Dellacroce's old headquarters, the Ravenite Social Club. On
the weekends, he held court in his old neighborhood, theBergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone
Park.
Special Agent Bruce Mouw
The Ravenite appeared impregnable, almost like a fortress. Mouw's wireman didn't see
how he was ever going to get into the place to plant the bugs. Night after night, the guys
of Mouw's C-16 team, as they were called, sat in a van outside the Ravenite Club looking
for opportunity. Eventually, they lucked up.
An elderly man named Mike Cirelli was the official caretaker of the Ravenite. His
nephew Norman DuPont helped out his uncle by opening up the club every afternoon at 4 PM
and closing up each night. Several times, they saw DuPont bring different women to the
club late at night after everyone else had left.
One of these women, it turned out, worked for the IRS. Mouw's team approached her and
she agreed to help them. Not only did she draw up for them a detailed floorplan of the
club, she left the door open on one of her visits with DuPont so that the C-16 wireman
could get in to plant bugs. In mid-January of 1988, Mike Cirelli died and Gotti was heard
on a wiretap telling DuPont to change the locks on Cirelli's apartment above the Ravenite.
The excitement of being able to get into the Ravenite Club and plant bugs eventually
waned. The bugs were ineffective operationally. Even when they overcame various technical
problems with white noise and microphone failures, the fact was that Gotti was simply not
talking business there. Now, three years after Gotti had taken over the Gambino family,
the FBI was nowhere in getting a case against him.
In January of 1989, Gotti was arrested by Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan DA for
assaulting John O'Connor, a vice president of the carpenter's union. This time the FBI had
promised to tell Morgenthau if it became aware of any attempt to tamper with the jury.
In the meantime, Mouw figured out why the Ravenite bug had
been so unproductive. The business meetings were being held upstairs in Mike Cirelli's
apartment, which was now inhabited by his 78-year-old widow. The old lady hardly ever went
out of the apartment, but when she was at a wedding one day, the wiremen got in and bugged
the place.
Mouw and the C-16 were very encouraged by the early results of the Cirelli
bugs. It appeared that the apartment was a vital spot for Gotti's conversations with his
capos. Not only that, Mouw received confirmation about the mole. "Listen," Gotti
whispered to Sammy Gravano about his encounters with the government. "We know
everything." The mole told Gotti through an intermediary that Gravano's construction
office and club were bugged. Even more importantly, the Cirelli apartment tapes revealed
that Gotti had bought another juror. Even though there had been promises to Robert
Morgenthau to tell him if there had any inkling of jury tampering, the Bureau did not make
good on its commitment.
John Gotti unconcerned about federal trials.
With at least one juror in his pocket, Gotti was acquitted the
third time in a row. "The Teflon Don" was what they called him. He was cheered
by crowds every where he went. Howard Blum sums up the situation in Gangland: "That
afternoon when the jury foreman, after three days of deliberation, had read the not guilty
verdict, he might as well have been announcing that the Teflon Don was beyond the law. No
one could touch him. Gotti was having the last laugh, and now the crowd wanted to share
it."
Eventually Mouw's group determined that the mole was Detective William Peist,
who had a grudge against the government when a pension ruling didn't go his way. Even
though they weren't able to get him to confess, they did succeed in neutralizing him.
There would be no more leaks from Peist back to Gotti.
John Gotti in a crowd of admirers.
In the late spring of 1990, it appeared that the Cirelli bug had outlived its
usefulness. Gotti had not been in the apartment for a number of months. Mouw decided that
it was time to package up what they had and present it to the Justice Department higher
ups. They had several remarkable conversations on tape; enough they hoped to put an end to
Gotti's freedom forever.
However, they keenly realized that Gotti had beaten the odds three times before.
"You know why they can't win, Sammy?" Gotti told Gravano in the Cirelli
apartment. "They got no fuckin' cohesion. They got no unity."
Throughout the remainder of 1990, the Justice Department wrestled with which prosecutor
would get to try the case since the case spanned several jurisdictions. The delays cost at
least the life of one hood that Gotti ordered murdered. Mouw was unable to warn him of the
impending hit without exposing the wiretap. Eventually, the Justice Department gave the
case to Andrew Maloney in the Brooklyn office instead of Robert Morgenthau in the
Manhattan office.
