Transcripts of wiretaps during the 1950s/60s

[Little_Al1991]

Ive read that a few notable figures were illegally bugged during the 50s/60s
Anyone know where to find the transcripts?
For example,the DeCavalcante Papers and any other transcripts of bugs during that period?

[Pmac2]

patriarcas office bug os out the snippets. they had him and all his soldiera talking about everything happening in the country in a small vending machine store

[PolackTony]

The FBI installed several illegal bugs in Chicago during this period and picked up a bunch of conversations including admin members Giancana, Accardo, Ricca, and Frank Ferraro; captains like Jackie Cerone, Ross Prio, and Rocco Fischetti; and high-level associates like Murray Humphreys and Gus Alex. A number of the transcripts of these recordings were made public as part of the JFK investigation files and are available on the Mary Ferrel site. Much of the content will probably be indecipherable or of little to no interest to someone without a keen interest in Chicago during this period, however (often dealing with mundane operational matters related to things like corruption of police and political figures, racket activities, etc). A couple of jewels are there, however, including Giancana talking to Accardo about a Commission meeting that he attended, and Fischetti discussing a major issue that he had with Genovese captain Mike Coppola that required a sit down with the NYC and Chicago bosses (both of these transcripts have been discussed in Chicago-related threads at length).

There were also some good recordings done of Genovese captain Angelo DeCarlo in conversation with several other NJ Genovese and DeCavalcante members. We have discussed one of these in detail relating to the American Camorra on The Mob Archeologists YouTube channel as well as on BHF.

Maggadino in Buffalo was recorded talking about all kinds of stuff, voluminously, much of it on subjects of substantial interest (at least IMO). Again, transcripts on Mary Ferrel.

[Little_Al1991]

I did come across this https://www.reddit.com/r/Mafia/s/M817IIeDIj

Useful for this thread

[Little_Al1991]

The FBI installed several illegal bugs in Chicago during this period and picked up a bunch of conversations including admin members Giancana, Accardo, Ricca, and Frank Ferraro; captains like Jackie Cerone, Ross Prio, and Rocco Fischetti; and high-level associates like Murray Humphreys and Gus Alex. A number of the transcripts of these recordings were made public as part of the JFK investigation files and are available on the Mary Ferrel site. Much of the content will probably be indecipherable or of little to no interest to someone without a keen interest in Chicago during this period, however (often dealing with mundane operational matters related to things like corruption of police and political figures, racket activities, etc). A couple of jewels are there, however, including Giancana talking to Accardo about a Commission meeting that he attended, and Fischetti discussing a major issue that he had with Genovese captain Mike Coppola that required a sit down with the NYC and Chicago bosses (both of these transcripts have been discussed in Chicago-related threads at length).

There were also some good recordings done of Genovese captain Angelo DeCarlo in conversation with several other NJ Genovese and DeCavalcante members. We have discussed one of these in detail relating to the American Camorra on The Mob Archeologists YouTube channel as well as on BHF.

Maggadino in Buffalo was recorded talking about all kinds of stuff, voluminously, much of it on subjects of substantial interest (at least IMO). Again, transcripts on Mary Ferrel.

A number of these transcripts are available but not all it seems
FOIA is the way to proceed in order to gain these transcripts?
I’m not sure as to why we don’t have access to the DeCavalcante tapes in it’s entirety

[chin_gigante]

A number of these transcripts are available but not all it seems
FOIA is the way to proceed in order to gain these transcripts?
I’m not sure as to why we don’t have access to the DeCavalcante tapes in it’s entirety

You can find the DeCarlo transcripts here: https://archive.org/details/WilliamRega ... arlo%2001/.

Lots of material from the Patriarca bug here: https://archive.org/details/RaymondL.S. ... 5/mode/2up.

Lots of material from the Magaddino bug here:
viewtopic.php?t=8810.

A lot of the DeCavalcante transcripts are featured in the books The Mafia Talks by Joseph Volz and Peter J Bridge, and Sam the Plumber by Henry Zeiger.

For Mary Ferrell it'll be useful for you to have a list of informant codes for some of the bugs:

NK 2251-C* (DeCarlo bug)
NK 2461-C* (DeCavalcante bug)
BU 82-C* (Magaddino bug)
BS 837-C* (Patriarca bug)
PH 623-C* (Angelo Bruno bug)
PH 714-C* (Angelo Bruno bug)
PH 752-C* (Angelo Bruno bug)
NK 2319-C* (Eugene Catena bug)
CG 6343-C* (Jimmy Celano bug)
NY 3123-C* (Michelino Clemente bug)
CG 6486-C* (Sam Giancana bug)
PH 591-C* (Peter Maggio bug)
CG 6576-C* (Pat Marcy bug)
CG 6610-C* (Pat Marcy bug)

[Yotam]

patriarcas office bug os out the snippets. they had him and all his soldiera talking about everything happening in the country in a small vending machine store

Is that the bug that caught the fascinating Angiulo quote about the DeCavalcantes being "one of the oldest fuckin" familes" (or something along those lines)? One of my all-time favorites out of any F.B.I transcript.

[PolackTony]

Thanks for posting the links and relevant informant codes, Chin. That is very useful to have in one place (for anyone reading who isn’t aware, the FBI denoted planted bugs with an informant code ending in an asterisk. As these bugs were illegal, the info obtained couldn’t be used in court but served instead for intel gathering on LCN. In many cases, intel from these bugs appears in FBI subject files in summary rather than transcript form, which can throw the reader off if the informant codes are redacted, as it can often read as if the info came from an actual human informant talking to the FBI rather than a bug [ eg, “Source REDACTED related that Joe Blow was meeting regularly with Joe Schmoe at Johnny’s Tavern”, etc]).

To my knowledge, these are the bosses that were recorded by FBI bugs in those period:

Giancana, Patriarca, DeCavalcante, Maggadino, Bruno, Giordano (STL outfit), Zito (Springfield, IL).

Underbosses: Ferraro, Angiulo (not sure if the latter was actually UB at the time that he was recorded?).

Acting bosses: Catena, Eboli, Miranda (? Again, unsure about exact timing of their positions and roles when the bugs were operating).

Consiglieri: Accardo, Ricca.

I’m sure there are some other admin members recorded that I can’t think of ATM so hopefully Chin and others can add more. Interesting to take stock of how many we know were recorded and for whom either transcripts or summaries are available.

[B.]

SF boss James Lanza was also bugged as was Cleveland boss John Scalish and there is excellent info from those as well. I've only seen a couple conversations they captured of Scalish but one of them is him discussing the Bonanno dispute with Jack Licavoli (then a capodecina) and others. The Commission ordered Scalish to tell his members not to interact with Bonanno members so Scalish discusses the need to hold a Family meeting to announce this and the protocol for inviting members to the meeting -- it's supposed to be done through a capodecina (Licavoli was supposed to invite Moceri, Delsanter, and another guy who were presumably members of his decina), but this is the recording where Scalish says something like "I'm the caporegima over all of you so I can do it myself" (he doesn't mean he was literally a captain, he's saying as boss he is in essence everyone's captain).

With Lanza, there are good recordings of him talking about the Bonanno problems with his brother (a non-member but obviously an insider) but the best one is him discussing Bonanno and issues within the San Jose Family with his close friend Stefano Zoccoli, secretary of the San Jose consiglio, who discusses how he has the right to go to NYC and request that his boss Cerrito get taken down as boss.

They had a bug in Jacksonville as well where they recorded Santo Trafficante mediating a dispute between two Jacksonville-based members of the Tampa Family, this tape being the reason the FBI found out the Jacksonville guys were made. Unfortunately I've only seen a short summary of this tape, not the actual transcript.

The FBI had a bug in Chicago capodecina Frank LaPorte's office in the early 1960s and caught some great stuff but unfortunately it malfunctioned early on and I don't think they replaced/fixed it.

The Frank LaBruzzo tapes were other good ones, which Kiduknow has posted a lot about.

Others too will come to mind. It's incredible how many high-level bugs the FBI had and the incredible info we've learned from them. A lot of my understanding of rules, policy, and protocol comes through these various bugs in addition to the other info they provided.

[Little_Al1991]

A number of these transcripts are available but not all it seems
FOIA is the way to proceed in order to gain these transcripts?
I’m not sure as to why we don’t have access to the DeCavalcante tapes in it’s entirety

You can find the DeCarlo transcripts here: https://archive.org/details/WilliamRega ... arlo%2001/.

Lots of material from the Patriarca bug here: https://archive.org/details/RaymondL.S. ... 5/mode/2up.

Lots of material from the Magaddino bug here:
viewtopic.php?t=8810.

A lot of the DeCavalcante transcripts are featured in the books The Mafia Talks by Joseph Volz and Peter J Bridge, and Sam the Plumber by Henry Zeiger.

For Mary Ferrell it'll be useful for you to have a list of informant codes for some of the bugs:

NK 2251-C* (DeCarlo bug)
NK 2461-C* (DeCavalcante bug)
BU 82-C* (Magaddino bug)
BS 837-C* (Patriarca bug)
PH 623-C* (Angelo Bruno bug)
PH 714-C* (Angelo Bruno bug)
PH 752-C* (Angelo Bruno bug)
NK 2319-C* (Eugene Catena bug)
CG 6343-C* (Jimmy Celano bug)
NY 3123-C* (Michelino Clemente bug)
CG 6486-C* (Sam Giancana bug)
PH 591-C* (Peter Maggio bug)
CG 6576-C* (Pat Marcy bug)
CG 6610-C* (Pat Marcy bug)

Excellent information
Thank you

[Little_Al1991]

Thanks for posting the links and relevant informant codes, Chin. That is very useful to have in one place (for anyone reading who isn’t aware, the FBI denoted planted bugs with an informant code ending in an asterisk. As these bugs were illegal, the info obtained couldn’t be used in court but served instead for intel gathering on LCN. In many cases, intel from these bugs appears in FBI subject files in summary rather than transcript form, which can throw the reader off if the informant codes are redacted, as it can often read as if the info came from an actual human informant talking to the FBI rather than a bug [ eg, “Source REDACTED related that Joe Blow was meeting regularly with Joe Schmoe at Johnny’s Tavern”, etc]).

To my knowledge, these are the bosses that were recorded by FBI bugs in those period:

Giancana, Patriarca, DeCavalcante, Maggadino, Bruno, Giordano (STL outfit), Zito (Springfield, IL).

Underbosses: Ferraro, Angiulo (not sure if the latter was actually UB at the time that he was recorded?).

Acting bosses: Catena, Eboli, Miranda (? Again, unsure about exact timing of their positions and roles when the bugs were operating).

Consiglieri: Accardo, Ricca.

I’m sure there are some other admin members recorded that I can’t think of ATM so hopefully Chin and others can add more. Interesting to take stock of how many we know were recorded and for whom either transcripts or summaries are available.

It would be great to see what Accardo and Ricca had to say
Sam Giancana was had mentioned, while being bugged, that if they had the Appalachian meeting in Chicago, it would have went smoothly