- He lied about murders he committed while informing and the FBI is rumored to have enabled this. A major strike against his credibility, though these particular lies were obviously self-serving and his incentive to cover them up was built in. He did not have the same incentive to lie about other matters unless they pertained to him or people he was close with.
- He was very accurate when relaying organizational info. Without him, we'd have to throw out a substantial amount of our intel on the Colombo Family (and other NYC Families) between the early 1960s and early 1990s. Few researchers have found reason to discount most of his organizational info and much of it can be corroborated.
- When asked to blindly estimate NYC Family sizes, Scarpa's guesses were outrageous. However when he was relaying specific membership totals told to him by others he was accurate. For example, he reported how Colombo did a Family census and the group had 114 members, a number very consistent with other available info. When he was told about the DeCavalcantes he reported they had around 30 members which is close to Sam DeCavalcante's own estimate of between 30 to 40.
- Informants, including Scarpa, sometimes make a distinction between active and inactive members for the purposes of law enforcement who are trying to conduct criminal investigations on members, but in terms of the internal organization there is no evidence Cosa Nostra makes a distinction between active / inactive when discussing membership totals. A member is a member and they all count.
- By 1968, Scarpa was firmly committed to being a full-on FBI informant and part of his life involved keeping track of specific details so that he could tell the FBI. When he was told about New Orleans he was likely aware of the fact that he was going to be reporting this information to the FBI as soon as possible and made a mental note to remember it. This wasn't info he was recalling from the past and he had a knack for detail when he was told specific info. The other information he provided from this 1968 Christmas meeting was accurate, including updates on promotions within other NYC Families.
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There may have been a margin of error to what Scarpa told the FBI, but my position is not that there were only 5 members and it's impossible for it to be otherwise, but rather this is probably a fairly accurate figure. It is unlikely that New Orleans had 20 members and Scarpa was told 5, while it's reasonable to think they had 6 or 7 and he was told (or remembered) they had 5. However we have yet to see solid evidence of more than 5 members by 1968.
We have a lot of claims from informants that run counter to other available evidence. We absolutely should be looking for other info that counters what Scarpa said, but in this case beyond it not "seeming" right there is little available evidence that can disprove his basic claim.
We can go into "what if" and "maybe there was a mix-up" but we have yet to find anything substantial that runs counter to what he said. The FBI's own independent findings did nothing to counter his claim and it can be argued this supports what he said.
With LaGaipa, what's important here is he can't be used to support Pecora's potential membership. LaGaipa wasn't a member in the early 1920s and wasn't confirmed by later sources, so his status doesn't tell us anything about Pecora specifically.
With these charts, the idea is to try and apply a universal standard to what is often a very unscientific subject. I'm glad you're providing counterpoint because that helps us figure out what those standards are. I think we do have to make exceptions to the rules in some cases but I'm not sure with NO.
