- This states Stanfa was a member of the Sicilian mafia before coming to the US and emphasizes his ties to the Gambino family. Keep in mind this was two decades before his relative Nino Giuffre cooperated and said he was sponsored into the Sicilian mafia by John Stanfa, so they must have learned from another source before 1983. I have seen a similar description of Stanfa and the Gambino brothers that may have originated from Italian investigators.
- First it points out that Stanfa was close to Bruno and his son-in-law Ralph Puppo. The Puppo reference is important, as Puppo's father Orlando was a made member and the Puppos came from Stanfa's hometown of Caccamo. This goes well with other accounts of Stanfa and Bruno having a close friendship.
- The last part is weird, though. Despite pointing out that Stanfa already had a close relationship to Bruno and his family for some time and had worked for them, it says he was "new" to Bruno around the time of the murder and had been vouched for by Tony Caponigro because of Stanfa's Sicilian mafia ties. They are correct about Stanfa's Sicilian mafia ties, but Caponigro was a Calabrian and didn't become consigliere until 1978. Stanfa was already well-established in Philadelphia before 1978 and it doesn't make sense that a Newark-based soldier of Calabrian heritage would have "vouched" for him because of the Sicilian mafia.
- A second reference to Stanfa's Gambino ties, this time it is material as it connects to his car and employment. They don't call him a made member of the Gambino family but the wording almost suggests they believed that at the time. They were well aware that he was a mafia member either way.
- So despite FBI reports around this time referring to Sindone as a key member of the Bruno faction opposed to the Testa faction, here he was telling a top Testa faction associate that he offered Bruno and Testa an equal split of his operations if Bruno would let him retire.
- Says Frank Sindone was a captain by 1970 and sponsored Ciancaglini for membership. Note that this hearing also stated Riccobene was a captain, so they may have been mistaken on Sindone as well. We know Sindone was about to be made in 1969 but the ceremony had not taken place as of early 1970. If Ciancaglini was sponsored by Sindone that same year, they must have had multiple ceremonies.
- These accounts show there were FBI informants close to Ciancaglini in the early 1980s receiving information that would later be corroborated by witnesses like Caramandi and Delgiorno.
- We shouldn't assume all three informants are separate people. The FBI was known to pretend one informant was actually multiple informants in order to further mask the identity of the CI. It seems unlikely there were multiple FBI informants close to Ciancaglini during this short period.
- Informant 1 stands out. It says he knew Nick Scarfo, Joe Ciancaglini, and Pat Spirito, but then mentions hearing info on the hierarchy specifically from Ciancaglini and Scarfo without referring to Spirito. It suggests the informant could be a made member given that the boss and a captain told him who held official titles in the family. Informant reports will often refer to the informant himself as someone the informant is close to. This informant was close to Spirito and Ciancaglini, knew the formal hierarchy from the boss himself, and appears to have had firsthand knowledge of the family's "shakedown" operations which were being supervised by Ciancaglini using Spirito and a small crew of associates. I'm sure many people on the street knew this information at the time, but Spirito already has some red flags.
- I've previously suspected Spirito was an informant for several reasons. For one, an LE agent (FBI?) gave an account in which he said a made member of the Philly family was informing in the early 1980s but the informant was murdered. Despite being a willing participant in the Calabrese murder in 1981, Nick Caramandi described how Pat Spirito became unwilling to help with later murder contracts during the Riccobene war and would spend most of his time drinking and disparaging the leadership. Spirito had also been convicted on RICO charges in 1982.
- Spirito fits the profile of someone who would be susceptible to cooperation. With the agent's info about a member informant being killed around the time of Spirito's murder and the above excerpts from an informant close to Ciancaglini and Spirito who knew about their activities, it lends itself to the possibility that Spirito was an informant. If the FBI did split one informant into multiple informants for this report, that would make sense as informant two had knowledge of murder contracts during the Riccobene war. We know from Caramandi that Spirito was aware of many murder plots during the war and was given some of these contracts by Ciancaglini himself.
