Netflix Fear City and Joe Cantamessa
Gangland Wire
Gary Jenkins
4.6 • 647 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2020
⏱️ 34 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As you wiretappers know last week Netflix released Fear City which is a 3 part series on how the FBI and the US Attorney convicted the bosses of the Five New York Families; the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese families. These bosses formed The Commission, and on a national basis, you can add the Chicago family boss to the Commission. The Commission settles disputes and makes decisions about approved and unapproved activities for La Cosa Nostra crime families.
Fear City tells how courageous agents and prosecutors used the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to take the New York bosses down as an organization. The codename for this operation was The Commission. The Director Sam Hobkinson wove together individual stories from street agent Charlotte Lang, Tech agent Joe Canatmessa, FBI supervisor Jim Kossler, to the Us Attorney Rudy Guliani. These agents followed, watched, waited, tapped phones installed microphones while the attorneys put together and presented the evidence and proved the mafia was an organization that committed corrupt acts.
Joe Cantamessa bugs the Comission bosses
In this episode, I interview tech agent Joe Cantamessa. He was the agent who made the entries into homes, bars, automobiles, and social clubs to install hidden listening devices. I highly recommend you watch this series. The producers bring the viewer previously unheard stories and video of FBI tech agents at work. Joe tells how they had to steal a mobster's car, put in a microphone, and leave it where it could be found. To enhance the idea the car was stolen by regular car thieves, they removed the hubcaps. In another story, he tells how he was inside planting a microphone when somebody called the police on them. he looks out and sees about 5 NYPD cruisers. His boss came out of the surveillance van and convinced them they should just leave with no further investigation. he noticed that microphone never produced any evidence.
Show Notes by Gary Jenkins
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Transcript
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| 0:29.6 | Just a little bit about myself. I was with the Kansas City Police Department of the Intelligence |
| 0:34.7 | Unit, and one of the things we did when you guys would do an install, |
| 0:40.5 | why they'd have a couple of us, check out a couple of marked cars and put us in uniform, |
| 0:46.0 | and we'd drive around the outside just in case anybody accidentally came in |
| 0:51.0 | or somebody called the real police on you, and then we could cut them off at the past. |
| 0:57.3 | Well, you know, that was the way we did it, but not at the time frame of these entries. |
| 1:02.7 | Yeah. |
| 1:04.2 | We didn't have that kind of cooperation until much later. |
| 1:08.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:08.5 | But when we did get that kind of cooperation, it was definitely a help. |
| 1:13.7 | Yeah, right. |
| 1:18.0 | You are listening to Gangland Wire, |
| 1:20.4 | hosted by former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective, Gary Jenkins. |
| 1:25.5 | Thank you. Detective Gary Jenkins. |
| 1:34.9 | Well, hello all your wiretappers out there. |
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