FBI Vault, Operation Donnie Brasco, Part 01 (1980-1982)

Part 01 of two. It opens with a deleted-page information sheet recording 153 pages withheld, many as duplicates and others under exemptions b3, b6 and b7C. The remaining pages are teletypes and memoranda, nearly all redacted, concerning a RICO investigation centred on a Brooklyn club. This page was filed from the OCR text; the page image of viewer page 14, the 1980 teletype, is now stored here.

A teletype of 1980 reads, as far as the OCR can be read: “CAPTIONED INVESTIGATION WAS INSTITUTED IN MARCH, 1980, BASED ON INFORMATION FURNISHED BY THE MILWAUKEE DIVI[SION CON]CERNING RICO, MI FILE 183-96, AND INFORMATION FURNISHED BY TAMPA DIVISION CONCERNING, TP FILE 183-263.” Bracketed letters fill a gap in the OCR. The same sentence, with “RICOs,” recurs in a later teletype. A memorandum dated January 29, 1982 records a bail modification in the Southern District of New York for a defendant whose name the OCR gives as Ruggiero: a $200,000 surety bond “applicable to both judicial districts,” with the note that “the $200,000.00 surety bond will be set in the SDNY, and a Personal Recognizance Bond (PRB) will be set in Milwaukee.” Copies went to the Milwaukee, Tampa and Miami offices.

The OCR of this part does not name Frank Balistrieri or Joseph Pistone. The federal court record of how the undercover work in New York reached Milwaukee is the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Balistrieri, 778 F.2d 1226.