Path to WITSEC Built on Omerta's Dead

WITSEC was perfected by the time Fat Pete Chiodo was ready for it.

Meet the Tweetfellas. Former mobsters living large, and in public.

So read a recent newspaper article, that sought to take to task these "media characters" who have the gall to balk "after completing their government service as informants."

Instead of "vanishing into America’s heartland with new identities... they are sticking close — some would say dangerously close — to their stomping grounds and stoking high profiles on social media, personal websites and reality TV shows."

Former NYPD Police Commissioner [from 1996 to 2000] Howard Safir, who created the witness protection program when he was a top official of the U.S. Marshals Service, said they’re foolhardy if they think they’re getting a pass on the death sentence for violating the mob’s code of silence.

“Organized crime is very patient, even if it means it’s going to be years down the road for there to be retribution,” Safir warned.

The old school wiseguys must be spinning in their graves and mausoleums at the audacious behavior of these traitors hiding in plain sight.

We don't believe Marzulli deliberately intended to paint a bull's eye on some former mobsters' backs but that is exactly what he did.

Even worse, his facts are not consistent with truth (yes, we're feeling ironic today).
Howard Safir was a lot of things. He was the Assistant Director of the DEA in 1977, then Chief of Witness Security for the U.S. Marshals Service. In 1984, he was Associate Director for Operations for the U.S. Marshals Service, holding the position until his 1990 retirement from federal law enforcement.

Safir was indeed a lot of things but he was certainly not the man who "created" the Federal Witness Security Program.

He did play an important role, however, in transforming what was a ragtag group of low-level, under-compensated agents into a well-funded elite unit -- the Marshals that come to mind today was indeed the result of Safir's tweaks to the system.

But the architect of the program was Gerald Shur. As Attorney in Charge of the Intelligence and Special Services Unit of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the United States Department of Justice he founded the program. Watch the video below. (He's described as "one of the founders" by C-SPAN.)


WITSEC was "formally" established under Title V of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, which defines how the United States Attorney General may provide for the relocation and protection of a witness or potential witness. Witnesses are put in the program at either the federal or state level.

The program falls under the purview of the U.S. Marshals Service, "the nation’s oldest and most versatile federal law enforcement agency" which has "served the country since 1789, often in unseen but critical ways," reveals the U.S. Marshal Service's website factsheet [PDF].
An excellent book that details the origin story  is: Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program (2003).
The Witness Security Program has successfully protected an estimated 18,400 participants from "intimidation and retribution" since the program began in 1971.


Persico was Shur's first target.

According to Shur, about 95% of witnesses in the program are "what we call criminals". They may be intentional criminals, or people who are doing business with criminals, such as the engineer who bought off a mayor "because that's how you do business in the city. In his mind, he wasn't doing anything criminal", as Shur said.

The mob has not shown a proclivity to kill turncoats. We don't see this changing anytime soon.

But once upon a time it was a very different story.

As is widely known, shortly after JFK was elected president, his brother as Attorney General wanted to reinvigorate law enforcement's efforts to combat the Mafia.

Huge obstacles awaited them.

"The Mob had better sources than we did," Shut said in Witsec, which he cowrote. "Omerta was very, very real" at the time. Shur noted that law enforcement had proof of Omerta's strength in the form of a multitude of photographs of dead bodies.

Shur was one of 45 attorneys hired by Robert Kennedy to revitalize organized crime investigations.
At the time some 25 various federal agencies were working OC cases, and not one showed a proclivity to cooperate. 
The worst offender on this front was J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI. 
Kennedy was determined to end the infighting and put the focus on prosecuting organized crime figures.
He formed a special unit, of which Shur was part, named the OCRS (Organized Crime and Racketeering Section). Attorneys such as Shur were to investigate and prosecute crimes against 40 high-ranking Mafiosi whom Kennedy himself identified.
Shur held the view that getting high-level informants to give solid information was the best way to combat the Mafia bosses.
His first target was Carmine Persico -- Shur actually thought Persico might flip. At the time "The Snake," as the Gallo brothers began calling him for his duplicity in betraying them and attempting to garrot Larry Gallo,  had been given a 15-year prison sentence. Shur believed Persico might flip to avoid the prison term.
Turns out Shur never got the opportunity. New York prosecutors refused to believe Persico would ever flip -- and the very thought was outrageous to them. They stopped Shur in his tracks.

"Do you guys know who Persico is?" shouted one prosecutor when he learned that Shur and his men wanted to offer The Snake a deal to inform on his cohorts. 

"He's not some small-time hood! He's a boss, for God's sake! What's wrong with you guys!"

(Note: This blogger has heard from two different sources that Carmine Persico was indeed an informant. If this is true, then who knows what would've happened if Shur had been able to sit down with Persico.)

Magliocco was related by blood or by marriage to the bosses of the Bonanno,
Magaddino and Profaci crime families.


OCRS was focusing on bosses (40, as noted) but Shur quickly realized they needed to lower their aim.

At the time Joseph Magliocco, in an attempt to consolidate his position as boss, was making a lot of noise on the street, meaning gunfire. He wanted the street littered with bodies, especially those of the Gallo brothers, before the Commission took over what was left of the tattered, troubled Profaci borgata.

Magliocco, like other bosses, ultimately proved to be too well insulated, even though his hold over what became the Colombo crime family was never more than tenuous.

Christopher "Christy Tick" Furnari, then a low-level Luchese mobster, happened to get jammed up when he was caught meeting with a Magliocco lieutenant while on parole.

Inside Furnari's home while arresting him for violating parole, Shur attempted to flip the loyal soldier, who's response was, basically, "stick it up your ass and fuck yourself."

"The fear of being sent back to prison was simply not enough to make Furnari crack."

Furnari, filled with contempt for the federal agents rifling through his belongings, even found a colorful way to indirectly confirm Shur's suspicion that he'd been sought to hit the Gallo brothers, of whom photographs were found inside a bible.

During Shur's interrogation about the photos, Christy Tick said with sarcasm:

"I sell life insurance and my boss gave them pictures to me. He told me to avoid selling life insurance policies to those guys. They might not be living too much longer."

Shur was suddenly horrified.

He realized the photographs of the Gallo brothers had been taken by the NYPD during surveillance.

Magliocco was getting information from Shur's own people.

At the time, in fact, so many cops and judges were on the mob's payroll it was impossible even to bust a bookie's wire room. The law would track down a location and before they could belt the front door, the occupants had vanished.

The first-ever mobster to flip, testify and get witness protection was Paddy Calabrese.

The program's earliest incarnation left much to be desired.

Part two coming soon...