DRUG RING/)BROKAW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301480009-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: December 3, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/01/08: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000301480009-5
Mull IN.LunlLl iNEWJ
3 December 1984
-- -=w/ -,)nUnnrr. opeciai segment tonight: the pizza ci
>ILLINOIS>Recently, the FBI rounded up a number of people and
charged them with being part of elaborate heroin
distribution network in America. For some of the
suspects, small-town pizza parlors were their cover. And
as Brian Ross reports tonight in this Special Segment, the
pizza connection is'a sophisticated elaborate scheme that
resembles an espionage operation by an enemy country.
ROSS: This is central Illinois farm country, hundreds o f
miles south of Chicago. Around here, once the corn is
harvested and shipped out on Conrail, there's usually not
that much to talk about until springtime. But this year
in the town of Paris, Ill., there's a lot to talk about.
The man everyone knows as Joe the Pizzaman, *Giuseppe
Vitelli, who has lived here quietly with his family, has
been identified by the FBI as.a Mafia mole from Italy, a
man in the pizza business but also in the heroin business,
allegedly sent here to this remote farm town 11 years ago
by his Mafia bosses in Sicily. Two hours away, in Olney,
Ill., another Joe the Pizzaman, *Giuseppe Tripiano, who
the FBI says is also a Mafia mole, allegedly sent here to
open a pizza parlor, raise a family and blend in so that
when orders came from Sicily, he could quietly slip away
to help smuggle in huge shipments of heroin and then move
the heroin to dealers in the big cities. United States
Attorney Rudolph Giuliani of New York: RUDOLPH GIULIANI:
I'd see them as foreign counterintelligence agents. They
were working for the Sicilian Mafia. As best we can tell,
they thought that they would increase their ability to .
conceal themselves by going to small towns rather than
operating in big cities where you have big-city police
department, departments and a large contingent of FBI and
DEA agents who are sensitive to looking for drug dealers.
ROSS: The Mafia agents who are sent to the Middle West
all came from this one town in the mountains of Sicily,
Ginisi..-And.according to the FBI, were all hand-picked
relatives of the Mafia boss here, *Gitano *Botelamenta,
who is now under arrest in New York. The men from these
quiet streets established a reputation as the most
ruthless and violent Mafia criminals in Sicily, killing
off entire rival factions to take over the business of
shipping heroin to-the United States, the Mafia's most
lucrative racket. -The men from Ginisi came from the small
town and moved to small towns.in this country. But there
was nothing small-town or small-time about the way they
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 Approved For Release 2010/01/08: CIA-RDP88-01070R000301480009-5
set up their business here, establishing contacts on Wall
Street and here in Congress. NBC News has found that at
least six members of Congress, for reasons that are not
known, introduced these private immigration bills to help
'get the alleged Sicilian Mafia figures into the country in
the late 1960s. None of these bills passed, but they were
introduced. Sponsors included Sen. Charles Percy of
Illinois, who introduced this Senate bill on behalf of one
of the Sicilians, *Pietro Alfano, now charged with playing
a major role in the Mafia heroin business. Sen. Percy
would not talk about the bill, but a spokesman said the
senator was asked to introduce the bill by constituents
whose names the senator cannot recall. Once in the
country, the Sicilians appeared to have done their heroin
dealing for more than 10 years before American authorities
caught onto them. These are FBI surveillance pictures
taken outside a bakery in New York City that authorities
say was another one of the Sicilian Mafia fronts. FBI
agents who watched the Sicilians said the heroin and the
millions of dollars in profits from the heroin were often
carried around in plain brown grocery bags and that in %
many cases, within hours of leaving here, the cash in the
grocery bags was delivered to two big Wall Street
brokerage houses and then transferred to Switzerland.
Prosecutor Giuliani says his investigation almost fell
apart when one of the brokerage houses, E.F. Hutton,. told
the Sicilians the FBI was asking questions. GIULIANI:
...by E.F. Hutton letting people know, it literally
stopped our investigation. And if we had not gotten
another break and a couple .of other breaks, actually, to,
to initiate the investigation all over again, I'm not sure
we would have ever been able to eliminate these drug
dealers.
ROSS: A spokesman for Hutton says the FBI did not make it
clear that Hutton was not suppose to tell the Sicilians
about the investigation. Federal authorities say they
don't know whether they found all the alleged Mafia moles
sent here from Sicily. 'Joe the Pizzaman in Olney, Ill.,
and 28 other alleged Mafia agents have pleaded not guilty
and will go on trial next year, charged with running the
biggest heroin smuggling ring in this country's history.
Brian Ross, NBC News, Olney, Ill.
Approved For Release 2010/01/08: CIA-RDP88-01070R000301480009-5