Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
From Dec. 2017: "How Scared Should Trump Be Of Mueller? Ask John Gotti or Sammy The Bull"
HOW SCARED SHOULD TRUMP BE OF MUELLER? ASK JOHN GOTTI OR SAMMY “THE BULL”
If history is any guide, Mueller will put up with 19 murders to get his mark.
BY HOWARD BLUM
DECEMBER 1, 2017 6:31 PM
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/how-scared-should-trump-be-of-mueller-ask-john-gotti-or-sammy-the-bull
Ten South, the high-security wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in Lower Manhattan, is, by design, as grim as any corner of hell. A half dozen narrow cells are lined one after the other, the overhead lights glow day and night, and the tiny window in each cell is frosted, allowing only an opaque hint of the world beyond the prison. There’s a slot in the solid cell door, but it’s kept shut most of the time, and so the prisoner’s unvarying horizon stretches as far as the four cinderblock walls. Only small noises intrude: the chatter of guards, the slamming of cell doors, the high-pitched moan of an inmate.
For over a year, stretching from 1990 to 1991, 10 South was the forbidding home of the triumvirate that still ruled the Gambino crime family as they awaited trial—John Gotti, Frank Locascio, and Sammy Gravano. But in the first days of October 1991, a cunning plan began to take shape to covertly transfer Sammy the Bull, in the pre-dawn hours, from his inhospitable cell.
***
When Gravano sent word from his cell in 10 South that he wanted to meet with the F.B.I., and that, more pointedly, he wanted to speak to them alone, the overwhelming suspicion was that it was more bull from the Bull. Robert Mueller didn’t believe it. And neither did Bruce Mouw, the head of the F.B.I.’s C-16 team that had painstakingly built the case against Gotti and his henchmen. As Mouw told me years ago, when I was writing my book Gangland, both Mueller and he, as well as just about everyone else involved in the case, thought it was a gangster’s scam. Ignore him, was the dismissive consensus. We’d be giving his lawyer—then Ben Brafman, the same canny criminal attorney now shaping Harvey Weinstein’s defense)—ammunition to hurl back at us with incriminating innuendo in the courtroom.
But Mueller had the final say, and he ordered the F.B.I. to arrange the interview—ensuring that it was done as covertly as any mob sit-down. Ten South was, after all, little more than a narrow corridor, a self-contained universe of adjacent cells. Gravano’s was flanked on one side by mob boss John Gotti, and on the other by the Family consigliere, Frankie Loc. If either of them, men who lived by the kill-or-be-killed rules of their ruthless profession, suspected that the Bull was contemplating becoming a rat, the news would swiftly be passed on to the avenging Gambino family foot soldiers. And Sammy would be a marked man.
If history is any guide, Mueller will put up with 19 murders to get his mark.
BY HOWARD BLUM
DECEMBER 1, 2017 6:31 PM
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/how-scared-should-trump-be-of-mueller-ask-john-gotti-or-sammy-the-bull
Ten South, the high-security wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in Lower Manhattan, is, by design, as grim as any corner of hell. A half dozen narrow cells are lined one after the other, the overhead lights glow day and night, and the tiny window in each cell is frosted, allowing only an opaque hint of the world beyond the prison. There’s a slot in the solid cell door, but it’s kept shut most of the time, and so the prisoner’s unvarying horizon stretches as far as the four cinderblock walls. Only small noises intrude: the chatter of guards, the slamming of cell doors, the high-pitched moan of an inmate.
For over a year, stretching from 1990 to 1991, 10 South was the forbidding home of the triumvirate that still ruled the Gambino crime family as they awaited trial—John Gotti, Frank Locascio, and Sammy Gravano. But in the first days of October 1991, a cunning plan began to take shape to covertly transfer Sammy the Bull, in the pre-dawn hours, from his inhospitable cell.
***
When Gravano sent word from his cell in 10 South that he wanted to meet with the F.B.I., and that, more pointedly, he wanted to speak to them alone, the overwhelming suspicion was that it was more bull from the Bull. Robert Mueller didn’t believe it. And neither did Bruce Mouw, the head of the F.B.I.’s C-16 team that had painstakingly built the case against Gotti and his henchmen. As Mouw told me years ago, when I was writing my book Gangland, both Mueller and he, as well as just about everyone else involved in the case, thought it was a gangster’s scam. Ignore him, was the dismissive consensus. We’d be giving his lawyer—then Ben Brafman, the same canny criminal attorney now shaping Harvey Weinstein’s defense)—ammunition to hurl back at us with incriminating innuendo in the courtroom.
But Mueller had the final say, and he ordered the F.B.I. to arrange the interview—ensuring that it was done as covertly as any mob sit-down. Ten South was, after all, little more than a narrow corridor, a self-contained universe of adjacent cells. Gravano’s was flanked on one side by mob boss John Gotti, and on the other by the Family consigliere, Frankie Loc. If either of them, men who lived by the kill-or-be-killed rules of their ruthless profession, suspected that the Bull was contemplating becoming a rat, the news would swiftly be passed on to the avenging Gambino family foot soldiers. And Sammy would be a marked man.
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
