Honor Thy Father Part 17

And yet, long after Bill had put the transcripts aside, he sat in the living room alone after Rosalie and the children had gone to sleep, feeling embittered, thinking again about the situations that De Cavalcante had made reference to, remembering the years that he wanted to forget-1963, 1964, the time of friction in the organization after his elevation to consigliere consigliere. All of Bill's hostility toward De Cavalcante and Zicarelli after reading their comments, and all of Bill's self-justification and ego, did not belie the fact that the "trouble" had begun in 1963 after he had moved from Arizona to New York. And still Bill did not believe, as Zicarelli apparently did, that he was merely a product of nepotism, that he owed his position of leadership strictly to his father when in fact Bill had often felt when he looked back on it that what he had inherited from his father was a slowly sinking ship. His father had gone off to Canada in 1963, had disappeared entirely in 1964, leaving Bill with a crew of mutineers led by Di Gregorio. If the men had remained loyal, if Di Gregorio had not been so bitter and jealous, and if Stefano Magaddino had tended to his own business, they might all be better off today. Or maybe not. Bill was better off without them. Let them sink, he thought, the h.e.l.l with them.

But the sensational publicity generated by the De Cavalcante tapes would undoubtedly keep the Mafia in the national headlines throughout the summer and fall of 1969, and Bill antic.i.p.ated more subpoenas and visits from federal agents asking the same old questions, to which he would give the same old answers. He would say that he had played no role in his father's disappearance, that he had absolutely no idea where his father had been during those many months, and that he would make no effort to find out. When the case came to trial-if the government could produce a witness claiming to have seen Joseph Bonanno during the period he was allegedly kidnaped-Bill Bonanno wanted nothing to do with the case. He had already told the grand jury everything he swore he knew about that situation, and he had enough court problems of his own to worry about.

The government in fact now claimed to know the elder Bonanno had been in Haiti during the months it was searching for him. Life Life magazine had already published this, and magazine had already published this, and True True magazine was about to report it in greater detail. According to magazine was about to report it in greater detail. According to True True, the CIA and the Justice Department had gathered "hard" information earlier in the year that Joseph Bonanno personally knew President Francois Duvalier of Haiti; he had had private talks at the palace in Port-au-Prince with Duvalier in 1963 when he had acquired the Haitian casino concession; and after he vanished on Park Avenue in October 1964, Bonanno reappeared in Port-au-Prince and lived there under Duvalier's protection for a full year. The kidnaping, according to Life Life and and The New York Times The New York Times and other publications, was legitimate and had been executed by gunmen working for the commission who took Bonanno to a hideaway in the Catskills, where he met with other dons and talked his way out of his a.s.sa.s.sination by vowing that his death would start a national gangland war and also by promising to relinquish his leadership in repayment for his life. He was believed to have been released under these conditions in December 1964, whereupon he traveled to Haiti, perhaps by ship, leaving unresolved the matter of his succession. Since the United States had poor diplomatic relations with Duvalier, who suspected the Americans of repeatedly attempting to overthrow his regime with guerrilla infiltrators trained by Special Forces and spies, Joseph Bonanno found Haiti ideal because it considered the CIA and FBI as archenemies. and other publications, was legitimate and had been executed by gunmen working for the commission who took Bonanno to a hideaway in the Catskills, where he met with other dons and talked his way out of his a.s.sa.s.sination by vowing that his death would start a national gangland war and also by promising to relinquish his leadership in repayment for his life. He was believed to have been released under these conditions in December 1964, whereupon he traveled to Haiti, perhaps by ship, leaving unresolved the matter of his succession. Since the United States had poor diplomatic relations with Duvalier, who suspected the Americans of repeatedly attempting to overthrow his regime with guerrilla infiltrators trained by Special Forces and spies, Joseph Bonanno found Haiti ideal because it considered the CIA and FBI as archenemies.

Bill doubted that his father would ever confirm or deny these reports; he believed that the circ.u.mstances surrounding his father's disappearance, and the place and manner in which his father had lived during the nineteen-month period, was a dark fascinating secret that Joseph Bonanno would take to his grave.

What most surprised Bill Bonanno about the De Cavalcante tapes was the commission's theory that Joseph Bonanno had poisoned Magliocco, which Bill knew was absurd, having lived in Magliocco's house with Rosalie and the children at the time of his uncle's death. Nevertheless, on the basis of De Cavalcante's statement the government ordered Magliocco's body removed from the vault where it had been for more than five years, and a second autopsy was performed. It failed to show any trace of poison, and the Suffolk County District Attorney's office in Long Island announced that the inquiry into the death of Joseph Magliocco was closed.

The taped references to Magliocco, however, as well as to some of Magliocco's relatives in the Profaci family caused much discomfort among some of the second generation of that family-one such individual was Rosalie's older brother, Salvatore Profaci, a quiet stout man in his midthirties who lived in New Jersey and was in the real estate business. The publicity that Profaci received in the New Jersey press, though not incriminating in a legal sense, disturbed him, and he was upset when he arrived in California on the second weekend in June to attend the wedding of his youngest sister, Josephine.

Slumped in a patio chair at the home of his sister Ann, where Sunday dinner was being prepared for a gathering of Josephine's family on the day before the wedding, Salvatore Profaci shook his head and said that the state of New Jersey was conducting an inquisition, and he repeated, slowly and sadly, that the a.s.sociation of his name with the De Cavalcante publicity would have a ruinous effect on his business opportunities. Bill Bonanno, who sat casually, drink in hand, with Profaci and some other men, disagreed, saying that his brother-in-law was overreacting, that things were not that bad, and that public clamor over De Cavalcante would eventually subside as the FBI and the media discovered something else to exploit. But Bill realized that his attempt to comfort Sal Profaci was having little effect-Profaci, unlike himself, was unaccustomed to having his surname in the national press in recent years. The decline of the Profaci organization in the early 1960s and the ascension of Joseph Colombo after the death of Magliocco in 1963 had taken the focus off the nephews, uncles, cousins, nieces, wives, and sons of the late Olive Oil King, Joseph Profaci, or The Fat Man, Joseph Magliocco. Such people as Bill and his father had replaced the Profacis in the headlines, and there were times in recent years, at family gatherings, when Bill sensed that a few of Rosalie's close and distant relatives would have preferred to disown him. It had little to do with his problems with Rosalie, though they might have justified it for that reason, but rather with "what he stood for." He could not prove this, he just felt it, believing that he reminded them of a life style that they would prefer to forget. And so, hearing the lamentations of his brother-in-law Sal Profaci, on the patio, Bill felt along with sympathy a slight perverse sense of delight in Sal's discomfort. It was nice, for a change, not to be the house gangster; and he was strongly tempted to gently poke fun at Sal, to mockingly complain at dinner in front of the a.s.sembled Profaci clan that Sal was "giving us a bad name." While prudence triumphed in this instance, Bill was later unable to resist saying teasingly to Josephine, the bride-to-be, that the next day the FBI might be among the wedding guests. Josephine was repelled.

"They'd better not!" she snapped. She glared at him, and was not amused.

The sprawling green lawns of the campus were almost abandoned at 6:00 P.M. except for the people moving up the stone steps of the Stanford University Memorial Chapel. It was bright and sunny at this hour, the air was clear and still. It was a perfect day, a perfect time for a wedding.

Inside the high-ceilinged chapel the pews were empty row upon row, and beyond the altar rail the wedding guests filed into the choir stalls flanking the altar. On the left were the Profacis, formal, dressed in dark suits and silk dresses. In the first pew, alone, was Mrs. Profaci, serene and maternal, wearing a well-tailored pink damask dress. Behind her was her younger son, an attorney, with his wife; her daughter Ann and her husband, Lou; Mrs. Joseph Bonanno and Catherine, whose hair was elaborately curled and carefully coiffed; other relatives, friends, children. As yet, Rosalie and Bill had not appeared, but since one of their children was ill, they were expected to be a few minutes late.

On the right were the Stantons-tweedy, bright flowered or print dresses, lean young women with long straight hair, long-haired college boys in sports jackets, including one youth who attended the tape recorder at the right of the altar from which the wedding music would come. The groom's parents, in the front row, were a handsome couple exuding the good health of the suburbs, and with them was the groom's grandmother, elegant in old age, looking very much the dowager.

In the center of the altar stood the chaplain, a tall distinguished man with gray hair, blue eyes, an eagle's gaze. He stood waiting, eyes fixed on the long empty aisle stretching ahead of him, although once he flashed a quick look to his right at a noisy child on the Profaci side. It was not a sign of reproof but of awareness.

Standing in front of the altar was the groom, Tim Stanton, wearing a new tan suit, loafers, his long blond hair neatly combed, a pink carnation in his lapel. Next to him was his best man, wearing the blue cornflower that Josephine had intended for Tim.

As the music was turned on at the tape deck-it was the Latin American folk Ma.s.s, Misa Criolla- Misa Criolla-Josephine Profaci, on the arm of her brother Sal, walked slowly up the aisle, looking poised and lovely, her dark bright eyes and hair in sharp contrast to the white veil and Juliet cap she wore. Her long white gown was of silk organza, with single rows of lace running vertically, and while it seemed to have been specially designed for her, she had in fact selected it in twenty minutes, much to the dismay of her mother who had spent months with Rosalie and Ann searching for their gowns. Josephine's bouquet was of blue cornflowers, pink carnations, and white baby's breath, which she had made herself, disliking the ones usually produced by florists.

Continuing up the aisle, Josephine felt a warm, deep attachment to her brother Sal, who, possibly even more than her mother, had initially found it difficult to accept her break with Catholicism; and if he had been part of the typical bull-headed "over-thirty" crowd that she saw as abounding in America today, he would never have come to this nondenomi-national ceremony. But she felt at this moment that she was walking between two traditions-her own family's on the left, with which she still symbolically identified herself by wearing a white wedding gown, and Tim Stanton's on the right, which she saw as closer to the independent spirit she felt as a modern young woman. Both of Tim's parents were democratic individuals in a suburban community that revolved around the right school, the right church, the right clubs; and while Tim's brother and sisters seemed to have accepted the more traditional values of that community, in the same way that Josephine's brothers and sisters had accepted the values of their's, Tim had somehow remained remote from his surroundings as Josephine had from her's. Tim's closest boyhood friends in suburban New York had not been the sons of stockbrokers but rather the sons of an actor, a well-driller, and a black garbage man who had since been driven out of business by the Mafia. After Tim had gone West to attend Stanford, he seemed to Josephine to be as lonely and as searching as she was herself; they shared, in a quiet and un-dramatic way, a rebellion away from the values of their parents' societies, and yet they also shared an abundance of love and acceptance from their parents. And so while Josephine recognized her own past as provincial and dull, she had never been tempted to turn her back on her family or to deny her origins, and the proof was right here, as she on the arm of her brother Sal reached the altar, approaching Tim Stanton.

As the chaplain delivered a short sermon on the challenges and meaning of marriage, Josephine looked at Tim, thought him very handsome, admired his new tan suit, and noticed that he was wearing the wrong boutonniere. After the vows and rings were exchanged, and the young man on the side of the altar pressed the b.u.t.ton on the tape deck, the sound of "O Happy Day," a Negro spiritual, was heard; and Mr. and Mrs. Tim Stanton turned and walked down the aisle toward the vestibule of the church.

Outside, a photographer snapped pictures of the couple walking down the steps, and soon all the guests gathered in front of the chapel, standing very close but not really mingling. They nodded toward one another, shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, but they continued to talk within their own circles along the sidewalk. Only the bridal couple and their parents moved freely between the two groups, kissing, shaking hands.

Mrs. Profaci appeared to be very much the mother of the wedding, a large smiling woman who had just married off the fifth of her five children; she seemed very comfortable in this situation, and she knew all the guests by name, including the couple's cla.s.smates from Berkeley and Stanford. Still, Mrs. Profaci saw no sign of Rosalie and Bill; and when the only explanation that she could get from one of Bill's friends was that Bill's home telephone did not answer, she became worried and mildly irritated.

An hour later the guests rea.s.sembled at the Los Altos Country Club, pa.s.sing in the parking lot on their way to the reception a new Volkswagen camper that was Mrs. Profaci's gift to the couple. The reception was held on the lawn of the club's Tally Ho Restaurant, a picturesque setting surrounded by trees and rolling hills and echoing with music from the orchestra that played under a canopy. Waiters moved through the crowd carrying trays of food and champagne, and as it became darker and the outdoor lights were turned on, Mrs. Profaci could no longer contain her concern at Rosalie and Bill's absence, and finally she approached two men she knew to be close to Bill and demanded: "Are you people holding something back from me?"

They said they were not, and one of the men excused himself to make another telephone call, although it was only a ploy-he knew, as did others, that Bill was boycotting the wedding and refused to let Rosalie attend because Josephine had failed to invite a cousin of his, a man from Castellammare who had recently moved to San Jose. When Bill had learned earlier in the day that his cousin was not on the guest list he regarded it as an insult, attaching more significance to this than to the fact that perhaps Josephine did not consider his cousin close enough to be included. But Bill preferred to believe that his cousin was not invited because, during the previous summer, while his cousin was in East Meadow helping Rosalie move the last of the furniture from the house, he had indiscreetly suggested in Josephine's presence that Rosalie's and Josephine's late father had been the "brains" behind the organization headed by the famous Joe Profaci, the Olive Oil King. This view had certainly never been held by anyone in Rosalie's family, who believed their father's a.s.sociation with Joseph Profaci was merely a relationship between brothers. Bill saw the exclusion of his cousin at the wedding as a rebuff by Josephine to the expression of an opinion that Bill himself shared, and he conveyed this to Rosalie on the day of the wedding. And during the afternoon as no invitation was extended, even belatedly, Bill's anger mounted and he finally forbade Rosalie to appear at the church. Rosalie protested, crying, it was her sister's sister's wedding, but Bill was adamant. wedding, but Bill was adamant.

By eight that night they were hardly speaking to each other and the next day when Mrs. Profaci learned the truth about their absence, she too became incensed and refused to answer the phone when Rosalie tried to call to explain and apologize. For days the hostility between Rosalie and Bill continued, and Bill told friends that there might be a separation. But Rosalie's one runaway summer in Long Island in 1967 seemed to have been the limit of her capacity to rebel, and gradually the energy to sustain the anger was too much and their life in San Jose drifted back to its uneventful routine of household details, children, waiting, and eventually forgiving.

25.

ON JULY 21, 1969, ONE YEAR AFTER JOSEPH BONANNO'S home had been bombed, the Tucson police arrested a suspect-a lean, spectacled twenty-three-year-old electrical engineer employed in Tucson by the Hughes Aircraft Company. His name was Paul Mills Stevens, and he had acquired a knowledge of demolitions in the Marine Corps. At the time of his arrest, Stevens's right hand and arm still showed the effects of being hit by the shotgun blasts fired by Bill Bonanno seconds after he tossed the bombs into the Bonanno backyard and made his escape along a dark street where a getaway car was waiting. home had been bombed, the Tucson police arrested a suspect-a lean, spectacled twenty-three-year-old electrical engineer employed in Tucson by the Hughes Aircraft Company. His name was Paul Mills Stevens, and he had acquired a knowledge of demolitions in the Marine Corps. At the time of his arrest, Stevens's right hand and arm still showed the effects of being hit by the shotgun blasts fired by Bill Bonanno seconds after he tossed the bombs into the Bonanno backyard and made his escape along a dark street where a getaway car was waiting.

But Stevens was not the only one involved in the bombings. Two days after his arrest, a second man, William John Dunbar, twenty-six, was surrounded by the police at a trailer camp on the Gila River Indian Reservation, where he had been hiding out with a girl. He was returned to Tucson and, like Stevens, was held on $10,000 bond. Dunbar was once a professional auto racer, a skilled archer, a springboard diver; and though he was most recently employed in the accounting department of an auto specialty shop, he still identified himself as a car racer and kept in top physical condition through regular workouts at the local YMCA. He was suspected by the police of having a.s.sisted Stevens with the bombings, but both men were believed to have worked under the direction of someone else, an individual whose name neither man would reveal.

And when it finally did become known, it was not through Stevens or Dunbar but rather through a twenty-one-year-old girl who was a friend of their's and had been privy to their plottings, a girl who had been engaged to marry Dunbar's brother before his death in a motorcycle accident. Her allegations in Superior Court caused sensational headlines in Arizona's newspapers as well as shock and disbelief in Tucson and embarra.s.sment in Washington. The man who instigated the bombings, who picked the targets and drove the getaway car, she said, was an agent for the FBI.

While she did not give his full name, saying only that he was "an FBI agent named Dave," Bill Bonanno knew immediately who "Dave" was after the newspapers reported the story-David O. Hale, the FBI's Arizona expert on Mafia affairs, an agent who had regularly tailed Bill around Tucson and who, on the day that Hank Perrone was murdered in New York, had visited the elder Bonanno's Tucson home and told Bill, "Well, I see your friend got it." Bill recalled the angry exchange that had followed between Hale and himself, and he also remembered that it was David Hale who had tried to induce the friend of Joseph Jr., the young blond Texan who had been the Bonanno's houseguest, into informing the government on the routine of the Bonanno household.

When the press confronted David Hale with the charges against him, he refused to comment; nor would anyone from the Justice Department or FBI headquarters in Washington reveal any information. But as the press persisted in its investigative reporting, the Tucson police finally acknowledged that David Hale was a suspect, among other citizens, and before long Stevens and Dunbar pleaded guilty to the bombings in court and told most of the story.

They testified that the bombing raids had been planned by Hale in the early summer of 1968, which was an auspicious time for such a scheme in Tucson. Editorials had already advocated that the Bonannos and other underworld figures leave the city, and many influential citizens throughout the state were in agreement with the national crusade against the Mafia-which, having reached a peak under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and having declined under Attorney General Ramsey Clark (who thought that the Mafia was overrated), had been revived by President Nixon and his Attorney General, John N. Mitch.e.l.l. It was not difficult in the charged atmosphere that existed in Tucson in 1968 for David Hale to find citizens who shared his concern about Mafia infiltrators, and he was thus able to interest the president of the Southern Arizona Bank in sponsoring a series of crime seminars. He also received enthusiastic moral support from such respected businessmen as Walter I. Prideaux.

Prideaux, fifty years old, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, had once taught school in Arizona and had briefly tutored Joseph Bonanno, Jr., so that he could pa.s.s the entrance requirements for the University of Arizona. Prideaux had been the general office manager of the Complete Auto Supply Company in Tucson in 1968 when he was approached by Hale with a plan to finally purge Tucson of the Mafia. Hale's plot was to explode bombs on the property of Mafia leaders, which he hoped would provoke a feud by making them suspect that each was trying to eliminate the other. Since Hale's plan might at the very least drive mafiosi from Tucson, Prideaux agreed to help the FBI agent carry out his mission. David Hale then approached Dunbar, another employee of Complete Auto, whose partic.i.p.ation was encouraged by Hale's promise that Dunbar's record of a 1963 theft conviction-Dunbar's only encounter with the law but one which prevented him from getting higher-paying jobs-would be cleared from his record. Dunbar then recruited Stevens, who he knew had had experience with explosives while serving in the marines. Stevens became an accomplice because, as his defense attorney later explained in court, Stevens "was in awe of law enforcement."

Stevens and Dunbar both testified that on the night of July 21, 1968, they drove to Peter Licavoli's ranch with David Hale and Walter Prideaux. Stevens said that he accompanied Hale over fences and across a field to the ranchhouse, but when Hale instructed him to bomb the house, which had a light burning that indicated someone might have been inside, he refused; so Hale settled for planting dynamite in the garage. They then hurried back to the car, and with Prideaux driving they raced to a point three miles from the ranch before the first of two explosions could be heard, damaging four vehicles and knocking a hole into the roof of the carport.

On the following evening the four men drove to the Bonanno house, first pa.s.sing the front of the home on East Elm Street, then turning onto Chauncey Lane, where Hale parked the car near a corner, leaving the motor running, and dispatched Dunbar and Stevens with the dynamite to blow up Bonanno's brick wall. After they placed the dynamite at the wall and after Dunbar tossed a small bomb over the wall, they turned to run; but Stevens was then hit by the shotgun blasts, and, confused, he proceeded to run, staggering, in the wrong direction-away from the car. Hale became nervous and impatient, Dunbar later recalled in court, and wanted to drive off without Stevens; but Dunbar insisted that they get Stevens, which they did, taking him first to Prideaux's home and then to St. Mary's Hospital.

During the months that followed, Hale continuously a.s.sured the other men that, since they were a.s.sisting the FBI and the government, they would be protected from prosecution if they were arrested. Convinced that it was Peter Notaro who had shot at Stevens the night of the Bonanno bombing, Hale approached Dunbar with a plan to avenge Stevens's injury by killing Notaro; knowing that Dunbar was a skilled archer, Hale suggested that death by crossbow would be an interesting method. Dunbar refused.

On August 16, Notaro's house was bombed, and by then Hale had drawn up a list of other locations to be hit, still convincing his accomplices that they were acting under government orders. Stevens told the court that once Hale even visited him in the hospital, carrying sticks of dynamite under his coat, asking Stevens to "crimp a cap into a fuse"; but Stevens, without the use of one arm, was unable to oblige.

Dunbar, Prideaux, and Stevens, however, were not Hale's total cadre against the Mafia, for he was sometimes joined on other raids by a pretty blonde divorcee named Frances Angleman, who was completing her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Arizona and who hoped to do an anthropological study on the Tucson-based Mafia for her doctorate thesis. The story about her relationship with Hale was revealed in an article in the Arizona Republic Republic, which obtained its information from individuals in whom Frances Angleman had confided.

According to her friends, she was with Hale on the evening of July 3, 1968, when he used a shotgun to blast out the large picture window at the Oro Valley home of Anthony Tisci, son-in-law of Chicago's Sam Giancana. She frequently wore a brunette wig when traveling with Hale, and she affected a Sicilian accent while sitting with him in Tucson nightclubs she believed were frequented by mafiosi. It had possibly been Frances Angleman seated in the cream-colored Chevrolet that Bill Bonanno observed during the summer evening of 1968 cruising slowly with its headlights off in front of his father's house when dynamite had been tossed out the car window, but had failed to detonate.

But Bill would never be able to confirm this from her personally, because before the FBI plot became public knowledge, she was found dead in her apartment with a .22-caliber pistol in her right hand and a bullet in her head. The police called it a clear case of suicide, noting that before her death-she was discovered by her mother on May 14, 1969-she had left notes requesting that certain books and other items be returned to their owners and that she had also left a typewritten will and a diary. David Hale was mentioned in her will, a fact confirmed by her father, a retired lawyer for Hughes Aircraft; and while her friends believed that her diary contained notations about the bombings, her father was quoted in the Arizona Republic Republic as saying that he had thrown the diary into the rubbish without reading it. as saying that he had thrown the diary into the rubbish without reading it.

Not long before her death, she was reported to have been in an extremely nervous state, believing, according to her friends, that the Mafia was following her and was aware of her involvement in the bombings. She had also claimed to have found, on the floor outside her apartment door, an empty shotgun sh.e.l.l.

On August 12, 1969, three weeks after the arrest of Dunbar and Stevens, David Hale resigned from the FBI and quickly disappeared from town, unavailable for comment to the press. His attorney later stated that United States Attorney General John Mitch.e.l.l had ordered Hale not to testify about anything he had learned in his official FBI capacity or to disclose anything contained in FBI records. Although the Arizona press was dissatisfied with this, it was unable to reach by telephone cooperative spokesmen in Washington for either the Justice Department or FBI. The editorial writers who had once been condemning the mafiosi were now condemning federal law enforcement authorities, and the columnist for the Arizona Republic Republic, Paul Dean, expressed the sentiments of many citizens of Tucson in his "Open Letter" column to J. Edgar Hoover dated August 18, 1969: Dear Mr. Hoover:It has been some time since we traded letters. And time is too long. For I enjoy our exchanges, reaching back years to when you commended an article I wrote on the work of the FBI in Arizona.Yours were kind words, expressing grat.i.tude for my support of your office and officers while hoping that the FBI's "future efforts will continue to merit" my approval.That was June 1965. This is August 1969.And today, a segment of the efforts of the FBI in Arizona no longer merits my approval.It concerns that hand grenade in your in-basket; that allegation made in Tucson last week that your bureau, or at least one of its agents, attempted a CIA-type fait accompli and tried to foment a Mafia war between those local boys made bad, Pete Licavoli and Joe Bonanno.Joe's place was bombed. Pete's ranch and trucks got blasted. Several restaurants and businesses allied to both mobs suddenly found business "booming." Finally, two men were picked up and charged with the attacks.And now, commenting on testimony from the state's chief witness, you have personally confirmed an FBI man was "allegedly involved" in the bombing of Bonanno's home and that this agent is no longer with the bureau.My G.o.d. This is like finding out that Eliot Ness was on Al Capone's payroll, that the Taj Mahal was built from an erector set and the Apollo 11 moon landing was actually a simulation in Meteor Crater.Worse, like Teddy Kennedy who crossed a bridge before he came to it, your office is spreading the wound by offering no comment beyond empty mumbles that "yup, it may have happened and we're looking at it."Your senior agents refuse to discuss even the basics of the issue, the name of the agent involved, the date his service ended, reasons for termination, and why, if his exit was clouded, it took you so long to get around to investigating him. n.o.body under legal scrutiny, from traffic offender to accused ma.s.s murderer, gets that kind of police protection.Tucson agents (apparently forgetting who pays the rent) have refused to allow a reporter for this newspaper into their front office. One has lied by saying he didn't know where the involved agent was or when he would be coming back.Reticence in search of discretion; reluctance for fear of false condemnation; silence in the interests of national security. This has been the FBI way for years and is a formula understood by the news media.But this is ridiculous. Suddenly, the FBI is tangoing with the truth to save face. This is children at play and third-grade public relations.While politicians are steaming, the U. S. Attorney is on tippy-toe, and a police chief is promising a sensational trial with blue-ribbon scandal, the FBI is sitting back playing with its destruct b.u.t.ton.Strangely, Mr. Hoover, in this particular instance, I'm not kicking around old arguments involving freedom of information, freedom of the press, and the public's right to know. There's a more important issue at stake.For, by this Tucson action, your fine, hand-crafted organization is playing to the subversive, militant, extreme elements we have been fighting together for years.I'm a member of the establishment, right down to my mortgage, three-year-old auto and sta-prest pants. So I've heard long-haired yelps about my inst.i.tution, my government, and my Federal Bureau of Investigation being hypocritical, immoral, corrupt, and sprinkled with collusion, dishonesty, and deceit. I haven't bought 'em because I've witnessed, even envied, the FBI as the world's finest crime-cracking machine. And I used to be a Scotland Yard man.But now, with all this ducking, weaving, and swerving, there is some support for the rabid claims. Suddenly, I have to ask myself questions. Tragically, I can't get any answers.How long before the angry young minds start asking questions? When they do, what do we tell them, Mr. Hoover?Yours sincerely, Paul DeanP.S. I'd appreciate a reply of about column length.

The reply that Paul Dean received from J. Edgar Hoover was a few paragraphs of formalized evasiveness; and when Dean wrote a second private note to Hoover asking for something substantial, he received nothing at all.

Although David Hale was reported to have moved to Miami, where he was said to be a security officer for Giffen Industries, Inc., he was served with a subpoena to appear for the Superior Court trial of his involvement in the bombings. When Hale did appear, he refused to testify. Walter Prideaux invoked the Fifth Amendment. Neither man was held. The two who pleaded guilty, Stevens and Dunbar, were freed, after being fined $286 each on misdemeanor charges.

After the trial, the Bonannos had no comment to make to the press. That the FBI was on the defensive was no cause for rejoicing in the Bonanno household, where it was felt that the agents would retaliate like wounded lions, unrelenting in their pursuit of revenge. The elder Bonanno and Peter Notaro had already felt the backlash of the FBI shortly after the publication of the initial press reports linking David Hale to the bombings-a simultaneous FBI raid at 7:00 A.M. was directed at the Bonanno and Notaro homes in Tucson, arresting both men on charges of plotting to get Bonanno's capo capo Charles Battaglia out of jail through the use of bribes, blackmail, and threats of death. Charles Battaglia out of jail through the use of bribes, blackmail, and threats of death.

Battaglia was then serving a ten-year sentence in Leavenworth, having been fined $10,000 because he was found guilty of threatening to force a Tucson bowling alley manager to install a coin-operated pool table that would be provided by a vending firm Battaglia represented. On the day of the arrest of Bonanno and Notaro, the FBI contended that the imprisoned Battaglia had sought to win a retrial on the basis of new evidence showing that his conviction had been obtained by the illegal use of electronic eavesdropping equipment. The FBI further alleged that Battaglia's plot to free himself had been outlined in a series of cryptic letters between himself and Bonanno, letters alluding to sums of money and certain rewards to be made to citizens who might support and a.s.sist Battaglia's campaign for freedom, and death threats to those who would not. On Bonanno's death list, according to the FBI, was David Hale.

The FBI's informant was a fellow prisoner of Battaglia's at Leavenworth, an inmate who worked as a clerk to a prison official and could send letters without censorship, and claimed to have done so in Battaglia's behalf. But when the conspiracy case against Bonanno and Notaro came to trial in Tucson, a third prisoner surprised the jury by testifying that the FBI's informer had admitted privately that he had lied-the government's conspiracy case was a hoax. The elder Bonanno and Notaro were acquitted-the FBI was embarra.s.sed; and Bill Bonanno, who was then in a New York court facing the possibility of spending many years in jail, thought apprehensively to himself, the government will get me now. My father beat them in Arizona, but they'll get even in this case the government will get me now. My father beat them in Arizona, but they'll get even in this case.

The case Bill was referring to was the credit card situation in Federal court-his having taken Torrillo's Diners' Club card from Perrone, having signed Torrillo's name on more than fifty vouchers during the cross-country journey from New York to Arizona during the heat of the Banana War, a time when Bill seemed to be a most likely target in the East.

Now, almost two years after that misguided venture, he felt he was the government's target. Though he had stood before many judges and juries in recent years, this latest court appearance was unlike any other in that it filled him with a sense of impending doom. He knew that the government had Torrillo on its side, that teams of federal agents had joined forces to fortify the prosecution's case, and that their combined efforts could incarcerate him for years.

When he said good-bye to Rosalie and the children in San Jose prior to his flight, he was aware, and thought that they were also aware, though nothing was said, that it might be a long time before they would see one another again.

PART FOUR.

THE JUDGMENT.

26.

THE CREDIT CARD CASE AGAINST BILL BONANNO BEGAN in federal court in downtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon, November 10, 1969, with the Honorable Walter R. Mansfield presiding. At fifty-seven, Judge Mansfield, a man with a full head of white hair, gentle blue eyes, and a smooth pinkish complexion, seemed so self-a.s.sured in his courtroom manner that one might have a.s.sumed that he had spent most of his life in magisterial robes; whereas, in fact, he had only become a judge three years before. It was true that he had been reared with the advantage of rank and position, and perhaps that contributed to his aura of command. His father, the late Frederick W. Mansfield, had been the mayor of Boston in the 1930s when the younger Mansfield was attending Harvard Law School; and during World War II, Walter Mansfield served as an officer in the Marine Corps, both in the European and Asiatic theaters, including duty with the OSS-parachuting behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia and working with guerrilla groups behind j.a.panese lines in China. in federal court in downtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon, November 10, 1969, with the Honorable Walter R. Mansfield presiding. At fifty-seven, Judge Mansfield, a man with a full head of white hair, gentle blue eyes, and a smooth pinkish complexion, seemed so self-a.s.sured in his courtroom manner that one might have a.s.sumed that he had spent most of his life in magisterial robes; whereas, in fact, he had only become a judge three years before. It was true that he had been reared with the advantage of rank and position, and perhaps that contributed to his aura of command. His father, the late Frederick W. Mansfield, had been the mayor of Boston in the 1930s when the younger Mansfield was attending Harvard Law School; and during World War II, Walter Mansfield served as an officer in the Marine Corps, both in the European and Asiatic theaters, including duty with the OSS-parachuting behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia and working with guerrilla groups behind j.a.panese lines in China.

After the war, separated from the marines with the rank of major, he became an a.s.sistant United States Attorney for the New York Southern District, where he prosecuted and tried a variety of criminal cases that included customs violations, crimes of theft on New York piers, bankruptcy frauds, narcotics activities, illicit still operations, counterfeiting, confidence swindles, and mail frauds. In 1948, a year after his marriage at the age of thirty-five, he went into private practice with the firm of Donovan Leisure Newton & Irwine, of 2 Wall Street, remaining there until becoming a federal judge in 1966.

A skier, golfer, tennis player, swimmer, and gardener, hobbies he pursues when he leaves his Park Avenue home on weekends for his residence in New Canaan or his travels into New England, Walter Mansfield's sedentary existence as a judge has not diminished his vital energy, a fact that was apparent in the spry manner with which he strode into the courtroom on this Monday in November. Climbing the steps to the bench, acknowledging the a.s.sembled jury, Judge Mansfield seemed anxious to begin the proceedings that had been delayed the previous Friday by the task of selecting a jury that would not be prejudiced by the notoriety of the Bonanno name. On that day, fifteen of the first twenty-seven prospective jurors had been excused or challenged. But now the twelve jurors were impaneled-eight women, four men-and the judge leaned back in his chair waiting for the government prosecutor to walk to the rostrum to deliver the opening statement. The judge momentarily looked toward the rows of spectators, the reporters in the front row, and he also observed with apparent satsfaction that the windows were partially open to let the cool November breeze into his courtroom on the eleventh floor overlooking Foley Square. Mansfield, a New Englander, relished fresh air and ran a cool courtroom.

The prosecutor, a tall, thin dark-haired man named Walter Phillips, who was about forty and wore a gray suit and a thin blue-striped tie, was about to speak. Bill Bonanno stopped whispering to his attorney, Albert Krieger. To Bill's right at the big table that was behind the government's table, was the codefendant, Peter Notaro, a burly man in his midfifties; and on Notaro's right was his attorney, a soft-spoken sandy-haired man in his forties named Leonard Sandier.

"May it please the Court, Mr. Foreman, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Sandier, Mr. Krieger," Phillips began. "As His Honor has already stated to you, my name is Walter Phillips, and I am an a.s.sistant United States Attorney, which means that I am representing the government in this prosecution of this case. I say prosecution because this is a criminal case. There are criminal charges which have been brought against this defendant or these defendants."

"What happened," he continued, looking at the jury seated to his left, "is that a grand jury sitting in this courthouse made up of people just like yourselves returned an indictment charging these defendants"-he nodded toward Bonanno and Notaro-"with certain crimes, and they have pleaded not guilty to this indictment, which is the reason that we are here today, and you have been chosen as the triers of the fact. It is your function to determine the facts of this case. How are facts proven? Facts are proven through witnesses, witnesses merely being a fancy name for human beings who come here, take the witness stand, and testify under oath to things that they have observed; that is, seen or heard.

"Facts are also proven by exhibits which are introduced into evidence and which you can see. Now, this particular case, the indictment charges the defendants with three separate crimes-conspiracy, mail fraud, and perjury.

"Now conspiracy merely, as His Honor will charge you in much more detail, is merely an agreement to do an unlawful act. It is an agreement between two or more people. In this case the agreement was to commit mail fraud by use of a Diners' Club credit card not belonging to either of these defendants, and not with the permission of the true cardholder, the person who actually owned the card. The mail fraud is the actual use of the Diners' Club credit card.

"Now you ask yourselves, what does mail fraud or what does the use of a credit card have to do with mail fraud? Well, the fraud is the scheme to defraud Diners' Club and/or other establishments who have contracts with Diners' Club out of money or property and that they do this by the use of the mails or that the mails are incidental thereto...

"Now what is perjury? Perjury is a very simple thing. Perjury is merely testifying willfully and falsely under oath before a competent tribunal such as in this case the grand jury. In this particular case the grand jury was investigating into the alleged fraudulent use of this particular credit card, and the two defendants appeared before the grand jury and as you will see, and as I will explain to you, they testified falsely when they did appear.

"Now the government, of course, has the burden of the proof, as it does in every criminal case. It is necessary for the government to come forward with the evidence, the proof. And what the government will prove in this particular case is that the defendant Bonanno went into a Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, and that he treated five other people, including Mr. Notaro, to a meal in that Mexican restaurant, and you will hear from the cashier of that Mexican restaurant. You will also hear testimony that Mr. Bonanno went into a department store in Tucson, Arizona, and that he attempted to purchase almost two hundred dollars' worth of sweaters and clothes...

"You will hear that he was later called before the grand jury to testify concerning the use of this credit card, which was in the name of Don Torrillo, and he testified that he was given permission by a Mr. Samuel Hank Perrone to use this card that was given to him by Mr. Perrone, and he said as soon as he learned or immediately upon Mr. Perrone's death, he stopped using the card. You will hear testimony that this same Hank Perrone was killed, shot on March 11, 1968..."

"Your Honor!" cried Sandier, Notaro's lawyer, getting quickly to his feet, "I object to this statement and I move for a mistrial."

"I join in that application, Your Honor," said Krieger, furious that within the first ten minutes of the trial, the prosecutor had suggested to the jury the vision of a gangland murder.

Judge Mansfield, frowning, said, "I didn't quite get the significance of it," and he permitted Krieger and Sandler to explain their objection to him at the sidebar, beyond the jury's hearing. "Your Honor," Krieger said, "this is totally irrelevant, this is just designed to prejudice these defendants before the jury." Mansfield paused, then agreed that the manner of Perrone's death had nothing to do with this credit card case, and so he instructed the jury to disregard Phillips's statement about the death. But the judge denied Sandler's motion of a mistrial, and asked Phillips to proceed.

"You will also hear," Phillips continued calmly, innocently, "that Mr. Bonanno testified that while he was in Tucson, Arizona, he asked certain attorneys out there about the propriety of his using this particular credit card. You will hear from each one of these attorneys that Mr. Bonanno didn't discuss this with them at all. And finally you will hear that Mr. Notaro also testified before the grand jury and that he said before the grand jury that a certain signature was not his, that he had not made the signature, and he had not seen certain airline ticket envelopes. You will hear that this was false, too, from one person who saw him make this signature.

"Now, finally, you will hear the testimony of Mr. Torrillo, Don Torrillo, the person who owned this credit card. You will hear that early in January he purchased airline tickets for Mr. Bonanno and Perrone to fly to the Coast and that he was never paid for these tickets and that sometime at the end of January of 1968 that Mr. Perrone came to his house and literally demanded from him the credit card and that he turned over the credit card and thereafter started incurring bills from all over the country.

"This is the government's proof. I have said to you what the government will intend to prove. In effect, in a way, I am indebted to you now-I owe you a debt because it will be your function to determine whether I have lived up to my word, whether I have in fact, whether the government has in fact, proved what they said they were intending to prove.... I am sure at the conclusion of the case you will be convinced not only beyond a reasonable doubt but beyond any shadow of a doubt that these defendants are guilty of the crimes that they are charged with. Thank you."

Krieger then stood and walked toward the rostrum next to the jury box. "As I am sure you recall," he said, "I represent the defendant Salvatore Bonanno, and my name is Albert J. Krieger." Krieger's head was still shaved bald in the manner made famous by Yul Brynner, and he spoke in a loud voice, his broad shoulders held firmly as he paced up and back in front of the jury. After expressing confidence in the jurors' capacity to render a fair verdict with regard to Bonanno, "to drive from your minds the prejudices which we may carry with us," Krieger a.s.sured the jury that the defense was "not interested in taking up the time of this court, in taking up your time, by engaging in any game of charades as to who signed what on such and such a date." Bonanno, he said, had already appeared before a grand jury and had admitted that he had signed the name "Don A. Torrillo" on numerous vouchers, having done so in the belief that the credit card had been obtained for his use through legitimate means. "The issue which you people will ultimately have to resolve," Krieger said, "is, number one, was the credit card extorted? A dirty word, extorted, but I think that it is what we are going to get down to here. Was the credit card extorted?

"Two, if it was extorted, did Mr. Bonanno have anything to do with the extortion? Number three: if it was extorted and he didn't know it was extorted by Perrone at the time that he started to use it, did he subsequently find out and use some kind of illegal means to prevent a complaint being made about the use of the card?

"This," Krieger said, still pacing slowly back and forth, "is what we are going to be dealing with, not whether he went to a restaurant some place in this country and treated four or five people to dinner. That means absolutely nothing. You will hear the stipulations in this court where he concedes use of the credit card because the use is meaningless insofar as this case is concerned unless the government can prove the fraudulent intent which we respectfully submit to you the government cannot.

"The perjury count is window dressing. The perjury counts arise from exactly the same circ.u.mstances as would come about if in the course of this trial I, as a lawyer, decide that it's pertinent and material for Salvatore Bonanno to get on that witness stand and tell what his recollection is as to certain pertinent facts here, and you reject that explanation. Is that perjury? I don't think that it is.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am very anxious and I believe that you are, to start hearing the witnesses. I believe very, very strongly that any defendant who comes into an American courtroom wants one thing, and that is justice. The government never loses a case because whether the verdict is guilty or not guilty, justice has been done so long as the jury has fulfilled its function.

"I am going to sit down, and look forward to this evidence. Please evaluate the evidence as carefully and with the same attention, once again, to duplicate some phraseology of His Honor, as if you were one side or the other. Pay that same careful attention. Don't let a word go by. Judge these witnesses, judge Torrillo, because Torrillo is the keystone to the government's case, not a bill in a restaurant, not an airline ticket. Torrillo's credibility is going to mandate your verdict. Thank you."

Leonard Sandler then stood, speaking in behalf of Peter Notaro, and emphasized that when Notaro had taken the cross-country motor trip in February 1968 with Bonanno and Bill's elderly uncle, Di Pasquale, that Notaro had no knowledge of the credit card that Bonanno was using for gasoline, meals, and lodgings; Notaro had merely gone to Arizona to help Bonanno with the driving and to take a short vacation. Before the trip, Sandler said, Notaro had worked in a trucking business that was going bankrupt, and since he was inactive at the time, he welcomed the opportunity to accompany Bonanno to Arizona, which Notaro had never visited.

"The facts will show," Sandler said, "that [Notaro] did not use the credit card on the trip, didn't use the credit card for a month, during which period he was in the company of Mr. Bonanno, who occasionally used the credit card with him, occasionally used it when he was not present. Nothing is done by him with regard to the credit card for virtually a month after its alleged original acquisition. Finally, in March of that year, his vacation has been extended and he is thinking of staying in Arizona and perhaps going into business there.

"Mr. Bonanno calls up the airport for a ticket for some other person who is coming from Canada and a kind of invoice, a preticket invoice, is prepared, and the name of Torrillo and the Torrillo credit card is given over the phone so it can be ready when it is picked up, and Mr. Bonanno asked Mr. Notaro to accompany him to the airport. When he gets to the airport he cannot park. He is a few feet away. Rather than take a parking s.p.a.ce, he says to Mr. Notaro, 'Here, take this credit card, pick up the invoice, sign the name,' in substance. And he does so without any feeling he is doing anything illegal, without any feeling that this is so extraordinary a thing.

"This credit card is waiting, he signs the name. Maybe he looks at the two doc.u.ments, the credit invoice and the receipt he gets for five seconds, maybe ten, maybe three, but surely no more than that, brings the credit invoice, brings the receipt to Mr. Bonanno and that's the end of it. A minor, insignificant detail in his life of no consequence, nothing to alert him.

"Eight months later he is brought before a grand jury, questioned by U.S. Attorneys and they show him not the two slips separately in the form in which he may have seen them for three seconds, but together on a photostat, and he is asked whether he saw these tickets, which they are not, and he does not at that moment in time remember the occasion on which he signed Torrillo's name and he says he does not recall the tickets.

"That's the perjury. That is the wicked, dreadful perjury, and the government is going to say to you, 'It is impossible, it is impossible that he could have forgotten that episode seven, eight months before,' and that will be the issue as to perjury with regard to Mr. Notaro.

"Was it impossible for him to forget it eight months later? I submit that you will have little difficulty using your common sense and experience in understanding that a man could forget the episode, and if you see something you wrote which is not your signature but another name which you never used before and never used since, that you don't necessarily recognize it as something that you wrote, particularly if you are on the witness stand under oath confronted by a group of jurors and under considerable personal attention.

"That will be the issue. I don't think you will have any difficulty in acquitting Mr. Notaro of everything in this case. Thank you very much."

"All right," Judge Mansfield said. "Mr. Phillips, call your first witness."

"Jeanne Sands," said Phillips.

Miss Sands, the hostess at Pancho's Mexican Restaurant in Tucson, walked into the courtroom from the door in front of the jury box. A fast-stepping attractive woman in her thirties who seemed to have just been to a beauty parlor, Miss Sands was duly sworn and was shown by the prosecutor a Diners' Club receipt signed by Don A. Torrillo.

"Do you remember the circ.u.mstances under which you made that receipt out?" Phillips asked.

"Yes," she said.

"What were they?"