Trust Agents, 10th Edition

1Trust, Social Capital, and Media

The Connected Guy

Joe Pistone thought he was going to go undercover for six months. Instead, he vanished for six years.

He was already practically a wiseguy. He had grown up among the Mafia in Paterson, New Jersey, and worked the same kind of jobs as they did. Like many involved in the Mob, Pistone was of Sicilian descent and spoke Italian. When he started showing up at Carmello's—a restaurant at 1638 York Avenue on the corner of 86th Street and one block from the East River—he fit in perfectly. He knew it was a spot in Manhattan where wise guys hung out, and he knew he'd get acquainted eventually. He just didn't know how deep he would get.

Turns out that, to go undercover, Pistone knew how to make all the right moves. He knew that in order to be a good undercover agent, he needed to be a good street agent: someone who understood not just how things worked in an office, but out in the city, too. He knew all about the Mob from growing up around its members, but he had been brought up by a family whose values led him to join the FBI. But the FBI didn't know who he was anymore. No one named Joe Pistone was working for them, nor was there anyone in the company records by that name; his personnel file had been removed and his desk had been entirely cleaned out. As Pistone himself says of his old life: “I obliterated it.”

While Pistone was immersing himself in Mob life, the FBI was trying to figure out who this new guy with the Bonanno family was—Pistone ...