Mafia Cops Conspiracy

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 suppSupport the show (https://www.change.org/p/ask-the-federal-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-accept-louis-eppolito-s-appeal-based-upon-structural-errorhttps://www.change.org/p/u-s-court-of-appeals-for-the-9th-circuit-please-free-louie-eppolito)

FBI Agent R. Lindsey DeVecchio's name has come up numerous times during our discussion of the alleged conspiracy between the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice and various leaders of Organized Crime. This episode delves more deeply into Agent DeVecchio's alleged role as both a handler of high-level mobsters turned informants as well as his own possible turncoat activity which may have included not only turning over information that allowed the mob to murder numerous people but who also may have helped cover up the deeds. DeVecchio's activities spanned the 1980s, 1990s up through 2006 and the so-called Mafia Cops trial of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa. His alleged actions as a mob informant so panicked his bosses in the Justice Department that they needed desperately to produce a coverup or all of the good that DeVecchio did as head of the Colombo Crime Family squad in getting 19 gangsters off the streets would be wasted. In addition, they were afraid that the ultimate indictment, that of John Gotti, Jr would be annulled. They needed a pair of patsies to take the blame for DeVecchio's alleged crimes. Thus, they used a carrot and stick on one of their high-level mobster informants, Anthony Gaspipe Casso, to finger the two NYPD cops first in 1996 and again in 2006. While DeVecchio retired with full pension and wrote a book about the various investigations against him, not only were Eppolito and Caracappa indicted and sentenced to life terms in jail, but repercussions of the coverup lead to the ending of a fruitful spying operation against the number three guy in Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorist organization, Ramsey Yusef and ultimately possibly to the successful downing of TWA Flight 800 and the disastrous attack on the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.Support the show (https://www.change.org/p/ask-the-federal-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-accept-louis-eppolito-s-appeal-based-upon-structural-errorhttps://www.change.org/p/u-s-court-of-appeals-for-the-9th-circuit-please-free-louie-eppolito)

In researching the events of the Oklahoma City bombing for a documentary, I interviewed Timothy McVeigh's lawyer and learned about how the FBI were able to create two composite drawings of the suspects who they named John Doe Number One and John Doe Number Two. John Doe Number One was almost immediately identified as Timothy McVeigh who was subsequently stopped by a policeman for a broken tail light, arrested, convicted, tried and executed for the bombing with a Ryder Truck bomb of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing hundreds of men, women, and children — which was at that time the biggest terrorist attack ever perpetrated on US soil.John Doe Number Two, however, looked absolutely nothing like his alleged accomplice, Terry Nichols. John Doe Number Two was described as five-foot-eight-inches tall, of stocky build, with an olive complexion of Hispanic, Filipino or Middle Eastern nationality, and thick jet-black hair. Terry Nichols could not possibly have been mistaken for John Doe Number Two; Nichols was tall, thin, and of fair complexion. In addition, Nichols was balding and wore glasses. Within days of the bombing, the feds said they had been mistaken and there was no John Doe Number Two — he had never existed. The problem with that was there were some 20 witnesses who swore under oath and penalty of perjury that they had seen Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the night before, on the morning of, on the way to, and at the scene of the bombing in the Ryder Truck — all in the company of some half a dozen Middle Eastern men, one of whom exactly matched the description of John Doe Number Two. And why didn’t the feds want anything to do with John Doe Number Two or the other alleged Middle Eastern men? Because they had all gotten away. So, they had a choice: they could say the worse terrorist attack in US history was carried out by two in-bred Right-Wing Christian Militia hicks whom they had caught in record time, case closed…. or they could say it was a Middle East Terrorist operation with two in-bred hicks for patsies whom they had caught while they let the real terrorists get away. Which do you think they chose? And just in case you think these were phantom Middle Eastern terrorists who, like the feds’ version of John Doe Number Two never existed, remember I was informed during my interview with McVeigh’s attorney that he had discovered a terrorist in the Philippines named Edwin Angeles who claimed to have been at a meeting in the Philippines attended by none other than Terry Nichols, and one of the most notorious Middle Eastern terrorists in the world — Ramzi Yousef, who was the architect of the first World Trade Center bombing, head of al-Qaeda in the Philippines and the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man. And what was the subject at that meeting? Bomb making. The attorney also told me that another person allegedly present at the meeting was Abdul Hakim Murad, Ramzi Yousef’s trusted deputy. After he was arrested by the Philippines police, Edwin Angeles drew a composite drawing of the tall, thin, bespectacled, and balding American who, Angeles said, met with the terrorists. It looked exactly like Terry Nichols. On the morning that Timothy McVeigh’s lawyer was arguing before the court to have Edwin Angeles brought over to testify at the trial, the Philippine government said they no longer had any reason to hold Angeles and they reSupport the show (https://www.change.org/p/ask-the-federal-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-accept-louis-eppolito-s-appeal-based-upon-structural-errorhttps://www.change.org/p/u-s-court-of-appeals-for-the-9th-circuit-please-free-louie-eppolito)

At the end of the Mafia Cops trial, two events had simultaneously occurred:R. Lindley DeVecchio, lead agent for the FBI Colombo Family Crime Squad was accused of assisting in four murders and of allegedly being an informant for Gregory Scarpa, Sr. of the Colombo Crime Family.The prosecution did a document dump where two letters from Anthony Casso were discovered in which he confessed to the killing of at least one of the mobsters pinned on The Mafia Cops, exonerated them of the rest, and alleged that his crime family informant was a lead agent for the FBI.Support the show (https://www.change.org/p/ask-the-federal-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-accept-louis-eppolito-s-appeal-based-upon-structural-errorhttps://www.change.org/p/u-s-court-of-appeals-for-the-9th-circuit-please-free-louie-eppolito)

On the last day of the trial just before the prosecution was called to sum up their case, Judge Weinstein ordered that Casso be called to speak about the details of his letters. In ordering a phone call with Casso, Judge Weinstein said that he had already determined Casso and the defendants were co-conspirators during a 20-year period. To make matters worse, neither Eppolito's nor Caracappa's attorneys were present during this call. Instead of representing their clients, they sent associates from their law firm (Ms. Kosetz and Ms. Schein). Eppolito's attorney, Cuttler had sent Bettina Schein, who by coincidence, had been the attorney in an earlier trial in which it was alleged a lead FBI agent had been an informant for the mob. Schein failed to ask the question that could have blown the case wide open — "What was the name of the allegedly corrupt FBI agent? Had Casso ever heard of a man named Lin DeVecchio?! Had Casso ever heard of Greg Scarpa, Sr, the mobster DeVecchio was allegedly working for in the previous trial in which Schein was a lead attorney?"Casso would later admit that Scarpa was not only his best friend but that DeVecchio was the allegedly corrupt FBI agent from whom he had received the information supposedly given him by the defendants. Schein never asked the questions and the Judge saw to it that the jury never heard a word about Casso exonerating the two so-called Mafia Cops.Thus, the jury returned a guilty verdict without ever knowing that the mobster who had supposedly hired the NYPD detectives on trial had completely exonerated them of all the crimes with which they were charged and implicated instead a former FBI agent named DeVecchio who had just been indicted literally across the street on four counts of second-degree murder.Caracappa died in prison of Stage 4 Cancer but Louie Eppolito remains in maximum prison for the past 15 years with no chance of parole.Support the show (https://www.change.org/p/ask-the-federal-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-accept-louis-eppolito-s-appeal-based-upon-structural-errorhttps://www.change.org/p/u-s-court-of-appeals-for-the-9th-circuit-please-free-louie-eppolito)

One year before beginning his research on The Mafia Cops, Dan Gordon was commissioned to write a short series about the Oklahoma City bombing. He was able to interview Terry McNichols' defense attorney at length and was told that there were some unusual circumstances beyond two White Supremacists seeking revenge for the events in Ruby Ridge and Waco. As Dan says on these podcasts, if you pull a thread on the cover up sweater you begin to unravel more important conspiracies. The cover up of an allegedly corrupt FBI agent’s ties to the mob is suddenly linked to the Oklahoma City Bombing, the downing of TWA 800 and the fact that 911 could have been prevented. Dan introduces this more critical conspiracy that affects the security of the US on this podcast. Support the show (https://www.change.org/p/ask-the-federal-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-accept-louis-eppolito-s-appeal-based-upon-structural-errorhttps://www.change.org/p/u-s-court-of-appeals-for-the-9th-circuit-please-free-louie-eppolito)

In 2006, Dan Gordon, an award-winning screenwriter and producer, was writing the screenplay to a Universal Pictures proposed film based on Lou Eppolito's book, Mafia Cop: The Story Of An Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob. When he read in the papers that Louis Eppolito and his partner, Stephen Caracappa, far from being heroes, had been arrested for supposedly selling secrets and becoming hit men for the mob, he asked Universal Studios if he could cover the RICO trial of two NYPD Detectives, Louis Eppolito, and Stephen Caracappa as research and they heartily agreed. During the trial, it became clear that Eppolito did not believe his defense attorneys were acting in his best interests.The news media dubbed the two NYPD Detectives the "Mafia Cops" and it was a sensational trial that on the surface looked like Eppolito and Caracappa not only took bribes to deliver information to the Lucchese Crime Family but also acted as hitmen for the mob.The trial hinged on the testimony of a small-time criminal, Burton Kaplan who said he was a go-between ferrying information and payoffs between the two detectives and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.Support the show (https://www.change.org/p/ask-the-federal-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-to-accept-louis-eppolito-s-appeal-based-upon-structural-errorhttps://www.change.org/p/u-s-court-of-appeals-for-the-9th-circuit-please-free-louie-eppolito)