Curtis Sliwa: Junior Gotti Goes Unchallenged On "60 Minutes"
Instead of the shotgun-tough Q&A the show is famous for, interviewer Steve Kroft seemed in awe of Gotti.
At points, he was smiling and laughing it up so much, I expected Gotti's mother to come out and serve him cannoli. When Kroft finally asked Junior if he had been the acting boss of the Gambino crime family, Gotti's lawyer jumped in and issued a denial.
Charles Carnesi said Gotti was only guilty of being a loyal son. In reality, if Kroft had referred to the court transcripts of any of the four trials, he would have seen that Gotti's lawyers consistently acknowledged Junior was a capo in the crime family and was acting boss in his father's absence.
It seems Gotti and Carnesi have created a new ranking system for the Mafia. Along with the boss of all bosses, the don, the underboss and the consigliere, they've created the position of "loyal son," which I've renamed "The Sonsigliere."
Junior Gotti went on to say that his father, John Gotti, really hated money; that instead of the two-fisted, degenerate gambler we knew him to be in a $2,000 Armani suit with a Brioni tie, he was really like St. Francis of Assisi, realizing that eventually you die, or in his case go to jail, and lose all your worldly possessions.
Gotti's revisionism went unchallenged and the sonsigliere blamed his criminal ways on growing up in Howard Beach.
"We were all told never call the cops and that everybody around looks to break the law," he said.
What a disgrace!!! I lived for a time in Howard Beach and Ozone Park. I had many relatives and friends who grew up there - and some who still live there.
They're cops, teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers and hardworking, honest people, who often hold two or three jobs to make ends meet. Gotti went around all day with his fellow miscreants, scheming to take money from hardworking people - and giving Italian-Americans a bad name along the way.
Junior jumped at the chance Kroft gave him to make some type of justification for the murders his father committed and ordered.
He said his father was part of the streets, would "live and die by the rules of the streets," and that anyone who snitched or broke the rules would "end up in a Dumpster."
Well then, Junior, explain what rule I broke because this is America and not Sicily. During his father's fourth trial, I spoke out on the radio against his actions and his crime family's reign of terror.
For that, I was shot with hollow-point bullets in the back of a taxicab on June 19, 1992. Gunman Mike Iannotti got 20 years.
Court testimony indicated your father ordered that I be shut up and that you followed his orders to the letter. You beat the rap on technicalities and your father died in prison and went straight to hell without an asbestos suit.
Now we're supposed to believe that you had an epiphany? You're shilling for dead Presidents!!! You'll write a book and do a movie. And, oh yeah, sure, some of the profits will go to a center that takes care of youth in crisis.
You'll be their mentor at the Junior Gotti anti-snitch academy, where the motto will be, "Snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches."
OOOOOHHHHFAHH!!!!!!
by Curtis Sliwa
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