# Joseph Pistone

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/people/joseph-pistone/

FBI Special Agent who worked undercover as "Donnie Brasco." A federal court wrote in 1998 that "In 1976, FBI Agent Joseph D. Pistone assumed the identity of Donnie Brasco ... and infiltrated the Bonanno Crime Family" for some six years; he testified at the 1982 New York trial, at a Milwaukee trial, and before the Senate in 1988.

The two Seventh Circuit opinions describe his undercover work only as it bears on the Milwaukee cases. The Southern District of New York's opinion in Cerasani v. Sony (1998) gives the court's account of the whole operation and of his testimony at the 1982 trial. The FBI's own pages and Director Webster's statements of 1982 and 1983 are the Bureau's accounts and are cited as such. His 1988 Senate answers are sworn testimony, not findings; where they differ from a court record, as on Bruno Indelicato's sentence, this archive follows the court.

The FBI Vault's Operation Donnie Brasco file, Part 01, says that investigation was opened in March 1980 on information from the Milwaukee and Tampa divisions. Its teletypes call him only "UCA," the undercover agent, and redact his name. The full section is [Donnie Brasco and the Bonanno cases](/donnie-brasco/). His memoir and the 1997 film are not sources here.

## Sources

- United States v. Balistrieri, 778 F.2d 1226 (7th Cir. 1985): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/461629/united-states-v-frank-peter-balistrieri-john-h-balistrieri-and-joseph/