(2 of 9)
In the process, Buscetta painted a picture of a 1980s-style Mafia that differs considerably from the all-in-the-family cliches of Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Today's mobster, in both Italy and the U.S., is greedier, meaner and less likely to respect the Mafia's internal code of honor than were the Mafiosi in the generation of his father's father (see box). Officials on both sides of the Atlantic consider Buscetta's break with the Mob a significant gain for law enforcement, which has thus far had only limited success in getting those who really know about Mafia operations to talk about them.
According to Judge Giusto Schiacchitano, one of the Italian state prosecutors involved, Buscetta's revelations "opened doors that before had always remained closed." U.S.
Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, whose territory covers the southern district of New York, said that as a result of Buscetta's disclosures, "we have a whole new area of intelligence that wasn't available to us before." U.S. and Italian authorities hope to use that information to round up even more Mafiosi and crack the Sicilian connection that has smuggled billions of dollars' worth of heroin into the U.S. in the past few years.
Many Mafia leaders are clearly worried. Late last week Leonardo Rimi, a mid-level Sicilian mobster and ally of Buscetta's, was gunned down as he hid in a farmhouse 30 miles from Palermo. Some Italian law enforcement officials interpreted the murder as a warning to Buscetta and to anyone else who might be tempted to talk. There was anxious speculation that the upheaval caused by Buscetta's revelations could produce a new round of all-out bloodletting.
Only hours earlier, Pope John Paul II had issued one of his strongest condemnations ever of organized crime. Visiting the southern Italian village of Paola, he called upon listeners to break "the tragic chain of vendettas" and abandon the Mafia's code of silence, "which binds so many people in a type of squalid complicity dictated by fear."
The probe that culminated in last week's roundup originated nearly a decade ago when the Federal Bureau of Investigation began looking into the activities of the New York Mafia "family" of Joseph Bonanno. The inquiry shed light on a faction headed by Salvatore Catalano, a Queens, N.Y., baker and entrepreneur who seemed to be doing more than selling pizza at his Al Dente pizza parlor. It gathered momentum when investigators obtained evidence that couriers for Catalano's group were transferring enormous amounts of cash through investment houses and banks in New York, Italy and Switzerland.
Court-approved wiretaps turned up other names, including that of Pietro Alfano, the Sicilian-born owner of an Oregon, Ill., pizzeria whose uncle, Gaetano Badalamenti, was suspected of smuggling heroin into the U.S. from Brazil.