Mafia Cops Conspiracy Episode 7: A deeper look at the affects of panic at the FBI

As we discussed during Episode 6, a civil war raged among the members of the Colombo Crime Family between the heir apparent, "Little Allie Boy" Persico who was allied with Gregory Scarpa Sr and "Little Vic" Orena for the leadership. Times were changing and more and more crime families were turning to drug dealing to make ends meet. Leaders were turning informant to the FBI and even negotiating for book and television deals. By 1993, and the arrest of Vic Orena by a huge push from the FBI's Colombo Family Crime Squad headed by R. Lin DeVecchio, more than 80 made members and associates from both sides of the Colombo family were convicted, jailed or indicted.

At the same time that DeVecchio was wrapping up the Colombo family, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, acting head of the Lucchese Crime Family was arrested and turned informant. He identified R. Lin DeVecchio as his long-time corrupt FBI snitch. Special Agent Christopher Favo of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility had been leading a two-year investigation into internal corruption and Agent DeVecchio's alleged culpability. News of this investigation leaked leading to 20 organized crime figures having their cases overturned or charges dropped on appeal based on the possibility that evidence against them was tainted. 

As you recall from an earlier podcast, Gregory Scarpa Jr was in prison in a cell next to the notorious Islamic terrorist Ramzi "The Engineer" Yousef and had turned spy for the FBI to collect information from Yousef. He even converted to Islam to get close. Scarpa Jr was also tapped to testify against his father, Gregory Scarpa Sr and his relationship with R. Lin DeVecchio.

Scarpa Jr. had just handed the FBI a diagram drawn by Yousef himself, explaining in detail how he had attempted to detonate a PAL 747, and his intention to destroy 12 more planes along with the assassination of the Pope and the destruction of the CIA building in Alexandria, VA in a terrorist attack code-named “Project Bojinka.”

More importantly, Scarpa Jr. enabled the FBI to not merely tap the phone between Yousef and bin Laden—he devised a plan that allowed the FBI to BECOME the phone link between Yousef and the architect of 9/11, the most dangerous terrorist in the world, Osama bin Laden. Yousef told Scarpa Jr. that he needed to find a way to communicate with his boss, bin Laden. Scarpa Jr. had never heard of bin Laden, but if the man was Yousef’s boss, he knew he’d be important to his FBI handlers.

The FBI and the Department of Justice had a major problem in that the Scarpas and Casso were pointing their finger at the head of the Colombo Family Crime Squad and the Agent who brought in John Gotti Jr, R Lin DeVecchio, as being crooked. On top of this, the FBI was simply incompetent and sat on major information provided by Scarpa Jr from Yousef that there would be another plane explosion linked to an Al-Quada plan to get Yousef out of prison.

When the TWA Flight 800 explosion occurred on July 17, 1996, Scarpa Jr, figuring he'd take the fall for the airline disaster, refused to work with Yousef and the FBI anymore. Somehow, and the supposition of Scarpa's legal council is through FBI panicked leaks, the investigator of the TWA 800 attack, Jaimie Kallstrom knew about Scarpa Jr's spying on Yousef which was supposed to be a deep secret. The FBI subsequently covered up Scarpa Jr's warning of how the TWA 800 attack would go down that was supp

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