and mafioso gregory scarpa sr a man who spent more than thirty years as a top informant while committing crime after crime and he did so also paid upwards of one million dollars so why is the f.b.i. working with instead of cracking down on organized crime and here to break it down is peter lance himself author of the book deal with the devil peter thank you so much for coming on great to be with you abbi and you know who would have thought that it took would take a twenty nine year old hacker to turn barack obama into george bush. absolutely well first of all why did the f.b.i. recruit a criminal mafioso i mean what was in it for both parties here well it first of all for years as you know j. edgar hoover even deny the existence of the mafia but when he finally came around and he kind of had to face it they began this thing called the top echelon informant program where in they would recruit mobsters who would supposedly give them good intelligence that they could use to bust other mobsters but gregory scarpa sr was the most violent vicious. member of organized crime in the history of ca

killed in brooklyn new york including two innocent bystanders my book proves not only did gregory scarpa sr instigate and propagate the war with his enemy victory in a just plain defense the whole time but linda vecchio his contacting their control agent leaked information to him during the course of the war that allowed him to continue killing people so you know it was really was what amounted to a cointelpro today or up until the early one thousand nine hundred twenty years after the church quite committees basically a paid assassin and i mean taking out the people that they you know they're giving him inside information scott was actually indicted a number of times yet the charges were dropped i mean was the f.b.i. integral in keeping him free from prosecution as well you mentioned it goes up pretty far how far a business really go well he was arrested twenty two times that i was able to determine and he only did thirty days and over forty years of murder mayhem and racketeering and particularly linda vecchio his last contact the agent admitted ultimately that he intervened to help him o

because scarpa sr. the title three wiretaps in the mafia commission case, which made rudy giuliani's future. propelled him into gracie mansion with his eyes on the white house. the cases would have unravelled are. so the stakes in new york were much, much higher for the justice department than in boston. >> wow. peter, a final question here with a little time. what do we draw as the lessons here? obviously, you need informants like you knee spie -- need spie. yet people walk away from this reporting thinking how do we get in so deep on the law enforcement side with criminals. >> here's the big take aiway. i've done three books prior to this on counterterrorism failures. the bureau was so obsessed forever bothering italians. the number one priority of the new york office was to get john gotti. they took their eye off this me it's a sizing cell. that cell executed the 9/11 plot. finally the southern district superseded the indictment. where was the bureau all those years? forever bothering italians. obses

killed in brooklyn new york including two innocent bystanders my book proves not only did gregory scarpa sr instigate and propagate the war with his enemy victory in a just plain defense the whole time but linda vecchio his contacting their control agent leaked information to him during the course of the war that allowed him to continue killing people so you know it was it was really was what amounted to a cointelpro today or up until the early one thousand nine hundred twenty years after the church quite committees basically a paid assassin and i mean taking out the people that they are you know they're giving him inside information scott was actually indicted a number of times yet the charges were dropped i mean was the f.b.i. integral in keeping him free from prosecution as well you mentioned it goes up pretty far how far of this really got oh well he was arrested twenty two times that i was able to determine and he only did thirty days in over forty years of murder mayhem and racketeering and particularly linda vecchio his last contact the agent admitted ultimately that he intervened to