Witsec (2 page)

Federal prosecutors had gotten Gravano to testify by making him an offer that he couldn’t refuse. They had evidence he had killed a fellow gangster. Gravano could go to trial, be convicted, and spend the rest of his life in a maximum-security penitentiary, or he could testify against Gotti and win himself a reduced sentence: in his case, twenty years. Better yet, he’d only have to actually serve five years of it in prison—the rest would be suspended—and all of his previous
crimes, including eighteen other murders, would be forgiven.

John Gotti was convicted in 1992 and sent to the nation’s toughest prison for life. Gravano, meanwhile, took up residency in the heavily guarded but much more relaxed Mesa Unit. Just before his release, he was flown to Washington, D.C., for a private meeting at the Justice Department. The government wanted to offer him another deal. He had become too famous for it to risk losing him. If the mob murdered him, other gangsters would be scared to testify. So Gravano was offered lifetime protection in the federal Witness Security Program, commonly called WITSEC. His name would be legally and secretly changed. He’d get a new social security number and other vital documents, and he’d be relocated along with his family in a new community. The government would pay all his moving costs and provide him with a house, a car, and a monthly check for living expenses until he could find a legitimate job. Best of all, if he ever suspected he was in danger, all he would need to do was call a special telephone number and a squad of deputy U.S. marshals would hurry to his front door. Because WITSEC was completely voluntary, Gravano could drop out at any time, no strings attached.

Sammy the Bull signed up.

Gerald Shur was the Justice Department official who made the WITSEC spiel to Gravano. Getting him into the WITSEC program was his last official act before he retired. It seemed fitting. Three decades earlier, Shur had failed to convince the owner of a trucking company to testify against Sonny Franzese. Now he was ending his career by reeling in Gravano, a Mafia underboss, the second in command. What better proof
was there that the much-feared Mafia code of
omertà
had been broken?

•   •   •

Gerald Shur, relatively unknown to the public, played a major role in the government’s war against organized crime. His official title when he retired was senior associate director of the Office of Enforcement Operations in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, but he was better known as the “father of WITSEC.” He was the program’s creator and for thirty-four years the driving force behind it. No witnesses got protection in WITSEC without his personal attention. He wrote nearly all of the program’s rules, shaped it based on his own personal philosophical views, and guided it with a steady but iron hand. During his tenure, WITSEC protected 6,416 witnesses and 14,468 of their dependents, including wives, children, and lovers. None of the witnesses who followed his rules was murdered. He was involved with
every
major Mafia witness in recent history, starting with Joseph Valachi, considered the first to tell the mob’s secrets. The other gangsters form a who’s who of organized crime: Joseph “the Animal” Barboza, Vincent “Fat Vinnie” Teresa, Aladena “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno, Joseph “Joe Dogs” Iannuzzi, and Henry Hill of the best-selling book
Wiseguy
and the popular movie
Goodfellas
. Name a mafioso who turned against the mob, and in one way or another Shur dealt with him.

He also dealt with their problems. At various times, he served as a mob marriage counselor, substitute father, even priest. He helped create false backgrounds for witnesses, arranged secret weddings, oversaw funerals, and personally persuaded corporate executives to hire former mob hit men as delivery
route drivers. Once he arranged for the wife of a Los Angeles killer to have breast enlargement surgery to keep her husband happy. In return, WITSEC witnesses helped topple the heads of
every
major crime family in
every
major city in the nation. Some ten thousand criminals were convicted in large part because of WITSEC witnesses during Shur’s tenure. Today WITSEC is considered one of three tools essential in combating organized crime. The others are federal wiretaps and the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, known as RICO. Ask any federal prosecutor and the answer will be the same: A good eyewitness can almost always guarantee a conviction. Fingerprints, murder weapons, forensic findings—all are helpful, but none is as convincing as a credible witness who takes the witness stand and swears under oath: “I was there and I saw the defendant do it.”

The John Gottis of the world are not the only criminals whom WITSEC has helped imprison. Colombian drug dealers, outlaw motorcycle gang members, white-collar con men, and, more recently, international terrorists have also been convicted because of WITSEC witnesses. It is difficult to find a major criminal case, whether it be the Watergate scandal or the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where WITSEC witnesses have not played a pivotal role.

Without the WITSEC program, few witnesses involved in major crimes would step forward. It not only keeps them alive before, during, and after a trial, it gives them a fresh start. A recent Justice Department study found that 82 percent of criminals who entered WITSEC never committed another crime after they were given new identities and relocated. By comparison, only 60 percent of criminals paroled from prison stay out of trouble. That makes WITSEC one of the
most successful rehabilitation programs in the country.

Not everyone who enters WITSEC becomes rehabilitated, however, and those who do not are the main reason it remains a controversial and hotly criticized program. In its first decade of operation, witnesses in WITSEC committed twelve murders after they were relocated in unsuspecting towns. Others used their new WITSEC identities to dodge creditors and pilfer millions of dollars by operating new scams. Sammy the Bull was accused of running an illegal drug ring less than five years after he was relocated by WITSEC near Phoenix, Arizona. Witnesses protected by WITSEC are often as vicious and deadly as the defendants whom they help convict. A former U.S. attorney once complained that about half of the witnesses whom Shur put into WITSEC didn’t belong there. “They needed protection before and during trials, but after that, they could have been sent home,” he explained. “There was no reason for Shur to change their names and unleash them in new communities.” A U.S. Senate subcommittee investigator accused Shur’s program in the 1980s of being the worst-run in the government, quipping it was “like a body without a brain.”

•   •   •

This book has been written jointly, but it began as two completely separate books about WITSEC. After Gerald Shur retired in 1995, he started writing an account of his career for his grandchildren to read. He decided to turn it into a book after several of his former colleagues heard what he was doing and encouraged him to expand it around the same time I was researching my own book about WITSEC, a program that I had first become interested in while writing an earlier
book,
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison
, which describes everyday life inside a maximum-security federal penitentiary. Dozens of convicts had told me that WITSEC witnesses had lied about them in court in order to cut themselves sweetheart deals with federal prosecutors. I was told that WITSEC witnesses were rumored to receive special perks in prison, from being allowed to order lobster dinners from local restaurants to conjugal visits with prostitutes. I set out to learn more and immediately began hearing stories about Gerald Shur. Some witnesses described him as a saint who had personally saved them from lives of crime and violence. Others attacked him viciously. In a magazine article published in 1991, a disgruntled WITSEC witness described Shur as a “small man with a small mind and a God complex.” In that same story, Shur was called “WITSEC’s biggest administrative problem—he is known as something of a monomaniac in the J. Edgar Hoover mold and his decision-making process has been called dictatorial and capricious.” A fellow journalist who had written extensively about WITSEC after interviewing more than a hundred relocated witnesses warned me that Shur was a “master bullshitter with an extremely vengeful attitude.” Although Shur had granted a few interviews during his career, he’d never really told anyone about his experiences running WITSEC or revealed the behind-the-scenes dramas in the program. When I first asked to interview him, he declined, saying he was busy working on his own book. But after several lengthy conversations, we decided to join forces, and it soon became clear, at least to us, that it was a good merger.

From the start, we agreed this would not be a traditional “as told to” book in which I would simply
ghost-write Shur’s memoirs. While we both felt that his story needed to be told, we also wanted this book to be a fully documented history of the WITSEC program. The best way to accomplish this, we decided, was for me to interview Shur just as I would any other source and present his statements and thoughts in a third-person narrative. This meant making Shur a character—the central character—of this book, rather than its narrator. This structure allowed us to reach out and include interviews with other key players in WITSEC’s development, including persons who had been critical of Shur. We also agreed we needed a first-person account from a WITSEC witness to give readers a full picture of the program. We wanted someone to describe what it felt like when the U.S. government decided to make you disappear. Part Three of this book recounts the story of Witness X. She is not meant to be representative. No single witness can be. All of the thousands of witnesses who have entered WITSEC are individuals with unique stories: some heroic, others tragic, several terrifying. Many of the witnesses who were interviewed for this book adjusted quickly and easily to their new identities. Other witnesses, especially the small number in the program who were not criminals, found this transition overwhelming, even torturous. Having to give up their identity and live a life that to all appearances eradicates one’s past was deeply disturbing for them. Many felt themselves trapped in two different worlds. Within the safety of their family, they shared a past—a heritage, memories, actions, relationships—that they were forced to deny every day as they lived a lie at work or with friends and went about their daily routines not only in an alien place but in a totally new guise. Relocation destroyed
their sense of self. Witness X captures this anguish as only someone who has lived it can convey.

•   •   •

Dozens of Mafia books have been written since the early 1960s, and while our book discusses many famous organized crime figures, it remains a story about a crime
fighter
, not someone perpetrating it. After spending two years working with Gerald Shur and interviewing dozens of his supporters and critics, I have come to see him as an honorable man who wrestled with the problem of getting into bed with the enemy, but saw in doing that a larger purpose. Over the years, he had to deal with prima donnas who included petty federal marshals, arrogant mob stars, and pompous members of Congress; with bureaucracy and budgets; with infighting and outfighting and betrayals. He had to handle malicious criminals and ordinary citizens who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and desperately needed protection because of what they had seen. At different times, he was both rhapsodized and maligned in the media. Neither the praise nor the condemnation seemed to faze him. He overcame the obstacles before him because he was both realistic and idealistic. Most of all, he succeeded because he believed in principle, had a passionate commitment to justice, and remained dedicated to his beliefs. This book is his story and the story of the program that he launched, and how, together, they helped end the mob’s deadly grip and forever changed the face of American justice.

G
erald Shur was fifteen when he came face-to-face with his first gangster. He was eating cheesecake with his father, Abraham Shur, in Lindy’s restaurant in Manhattan when two men sauntered by their table.

“Hello, Abe,” one said as they passed.

Shur’s father nodded at him.

“Who’s that?” his curious son asked.

“They’re Johnny Dio’s bodyguards,” his father replied. “I know them from work.” Abe Shur was a dress contractor in New York City’s mob-infested garment district. His son recognized the name. John “Johnny Dio” Dioguardi was the mob’s “labor expert.” In the 1950s and early 1960s he controlled several unions for his Mafia boss, crime-family head Tommy “Three Finger Brown” Lucchese. Not long after this chance encounter, Shur read in the newspaper that labor columnist Victor Riesel had been attacked as he was leaving Lindy’s by a man who threw sulfuric acid into his face, permanently blinding him. Riesel had been writing columns critical of Johnny Dio’s cozy relationship with Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa, and although Johnny Dio was the prime suspect behind the attack, he was never prosecuted. Witnesses refused to testify, and Abraham Telvi, the punk who
threw the acid, was found dead a few days later. He’d been executed on his knees with his hands and legs tied behind him. He had reportedly tried to blackmail Dio.