Customer Reviews

The Good Guys: How We Turned the FBI 'Round - and Finally Broke the Mob

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Very few Americans realize the reach of the Mafia. For decades, the FBI even refused to admit to the presence of a Mafia. The Mob thumbed their noses at law enforcement. Punks like John Gotti became cult heroes. Then came an incredible confluence of a new breed of FBI agents and a new law, the RICO statute. RICO only required that the government prove a pattern of racketeering activity. This allowed them to go after the bosses, who had only issued orders. "The Good Guys" is an enthralling story of how a group of FBI agents in New York, and a few prosecutors, made an all-out assault on the Mafia, using wiretaps, bugs, undercover agents, and surveillance. How they brought the Mob to its knees.

The author of the book, FBI agent Jules Bonavolonta, grew up in an Italian family in which his father's tailor shop was a target for Mafia intimidation and extortion. Some of the other players you know well. Rudy Guliani, now Mayor of New York. Louie Freeh, now director of the FBI. Not known at the time, but agent Joe Pistone played a key role. He was undercover in the Mob for six years and got so tight with one of the bosses, that he, Joe Pistone, FBI agent, was asked to carry out a contract for a Mob killing!

And my favorite, Jim Kallstrom, who was the FBI agent in charge of the squads that did the bugging and wiretapping of the Mob in the New York City area. Kallstrom is the sometimes gruff, and always intimidating, spokesman for the FBI on the TWA flight 800 crash. I relate more to him because I did some lock picking and bugging of the Mafia as a criminal investigator for the U.S. Treasury Department - and later the same kind of work as a CIA agent in several foreign countries.

The book is a behind-the-scenes look at how Mob figures were targeted, bugged, wiretapped, and surveilled, and is like no other real-life story I have seen in print. It is full of gripping suspense and unexpected humor, like when an agent got caught under the bed of a bigtime mobster and told the wiseguy that he was the exterminator man. And the guy bought it! No Einsteins in this group.

But too, this is a remarkably frank book in which Jules Bonavolonta and other agents express their complete contempt for the "pencil-necked geeks" at FBI headquarters. They rail against the bean counters who want instant statistics to parade before the Congress and the press. This group of mutineers put their careers on the line every day in their passionate belief that they had to do some long-term work to infiltrate and expose the Mob. As a man who worked for both Treasury and CIA, I respect this small group of FBI agents as much for their willingness to tell the bosses to go climb a rope, as their determination and courage in finally making the cases that brought down the Mob families in New York.

I'm a novelist, but I would have a tough time topping the story told in "The Good Guys." At times, it is hard to believe that it is a true story. It would be impossible for you not to enjoy this book.

Richard C. Rhodes rcr@gte.ne

The author grabs your attention from the opening words and you are sucked into the inside workings and politics of the FBI as you have never before seen. The book does an excellent job of describing what makes the mafia tick, how agents from the FBI made it their job to figure this out and develop a strategy to bring down the mob. Jules Bonavolonta tells an emotionally charged personal account of his war against an organization that gave all good, hard working Italians a bad name. By the end of the book, you are cheering for Jules and revelling in his eventual triumph. This book is filled with exciting first person stories which take you on a roller coaster ride - from hearbreak to fear to discouragement to elation. A must read

I have read probably 20 books about the mafia and this is a fantastic one from the perspective not normally covered - that from the law enforcement side. Donnie Brasco and also Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business are also extrememly good reads and this complements both of those and fill in gaps plus from a slightly different opinion of things. The book is a good read and really had me rooting for Jules and the whole team and definitely admire what they were up against. Anybody who has read about the FBI under Hoover will sepecially enjoy reading this.

I started it at 5am this morning and just finished so tells you how much I enjoyed the book!! (Did have a couple of breaks in-between :-)

Excellent book but deceptively advertised inasmuch as I thought the purchase was of a hard bound book, not the paperback version. Paperback was in medium to medium/low condition. Content of book is excellent (I know the author and was interviwed in 1985 for one of the chapters concerning my role in assisting in the eradication of a traditional La Cosa Nostra (American MAFIA) crime family.

I read this after reading Donnie Brasco, so I was a bit disappointed in the comparison in the style of writing. But after setting that aside, I found this to be an excellent book with incredible detail in the 'catching the crook' process. Bravo Jules Bonavolonta!

Former FBI agent Jules Bonavolonta describes departmental efforts to investigate and prosecute member of the mob/mafia in New York City. We see how the FBI used legal surveillance means like wiretaps, bugs, and undercover agents including the legendary Joe Pistone ("Donnie Brasco") in their oft-successful efforts to bring down top mobsters including the "Teflon Don" John Gotti and many other figures. Bonavolonta has quite a bit of scorn for mobsters, plus FBI employees who collect their paychecks without any extra effort. This readable book gives a nice view of the mob workings and FBI opposition, but I'd have preferred less cursing and machismo from the author.

This book is an embarrassment to law enforcement personnel and to Itatlian Americans in particular. The author must have paid someone under the table to obtain a college degree. I counted the use of the "F" word and gave up around 150. The author, a managerial factotum in the FBI is forever worshipping his superiors (Louis Freeh and His Eminence James Kallstrom) to a degree ad nauseam. No wonder, now in the private sector, this flunkie and illiterate is now again serving his masters (Freeh/Kallstrom)in bank security. Perhaps he should have started there.

Overall, I enjoyed Mr. Bonavolonta's story of the breaking up of the Italian Mafia. There were many facts I did not know, especially those told from an insider's perspective, plus interesting insights into the day to day operations of both the F.B.I. and the Mafia.

However, I found several of what I considered glaring weaknesses.

First, the excess profanity. Believe me, I am not a prude by any measure, and I definitely believe that profanity has its place in literature, especially when used in quotations. However, I found Mr. Bonavolonta's excessive and promiscuous use of it to be, at first offensive, then boring, and finally insulting to my intelligence. Is it that Mr. Bonavolonta felt that his audience is made up of the dense and unsophisticated, unable to understand frustration with the burocracy and unimaginative, stodgy time servers within the F.B.I. unless he calls them motherfuckers and the system bullshit, over and over and over again? Mr. Bonavolonta needs to be aquainted with the concept that, sometimes, less is more.

Second, I found that Mr. Bonavolonta's apparent view that the F.B.I. operated in a virtual vacuum while investigating organized crime and the Italian Mafia to be ridiculous and pedestrian in the extreme. There were many other law enforcement organizations involved in these wars, and to minimize or exclude them from the telling of this story does a great diservice to them, to Mr. Bonavolonta's reputation as a accurate reporter of facts, and especially to the reader.