All language subtitles for Lords.of.the.Mafia.with.Robert.Stack.S01E06.The.Mafia.in.Italy.Today.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

1992,

a massive explosion
kills Italy's leading
mafia prosecutor.

It was an act of revenge

ordered by one of the
most ruthless bosses

in the history of
the Italian Mafia.

Some called him the Short One.

His enemies called
him the Beast.

The rise and fall of
Salvatore "Toto" Riina

is a story of the
most dramatic period

in the history of
Italian organized crime.

Though the Sicilian Mafia
is only one of several

criminal syndicates in Italy,

under Riina's
guidance it achieved

a position of
unprecedented power,

and subverted the highest levels
of the Italian government.

He erased mafia traditions

and destroyed the
code of silence

as he brought the Sicilian
Mafia onto the world stage.

But his bloody quest for power

beard one unplanned consequence,

the most effective mafia
prosecution in history.

Toto Riina's story began in
the small town of Corleone,

a poor farm town less than
an hour's drive from Palermo.

The origins of both Riina
and the mafia are found here

in the hard, desperate
life of rural Sicily.

Historically, if
you're looking at the
roots of the mafia

in Sicily and in Italy,
you can trace it back

to really the history of
this country being overrun

by a whole bunch of
different cultures,

the French, the
Spanish, Venetians.

There's never been much
of a law enforcement

apparatus on the
island, it's very rural.

In fact, it's very much
like a feudal system,

and this is the mafia came from.

In fact, many
countries that have

an organized crime tradition
had feudal roots initially

in its historical origins.

In Sicily, almost
all the land was owned

by a small number of landowners,

and most of the population
were impoverished peasants

who didn't own any land,

and the landowners either lived
in the big cities of Sicily

or they lived on the
mainland of Italy,

and their managers
of these estates

who used force and began
to run these estates

in the absence of the landlords

are the origins of the mafia.

Riina understood
violence from a young age.

It has been reported that
Riina's fate was sealed

in 1945 at the age of 15.

During an evening
out with friends,

he argued with another boy,

settling the dispute by
shooting him in the leg

and leaving him
to bleed to death.

He spent the next
several years in prison,

and when he was
freed, he discovered

that he had earned
acceptance and a new future

with the Corleonesi Mafia

in the emerging world
of post-war Italy.

His timing couldn't
have been better.

World War II, the invasion
of Italy was underway,

and Mussolini's fascist
dictatorship was under siege.

Mafia collaboration helped
ease the allied forces'

move through Sicily.

Persecuted under
Mussolini's regime,

the mafia prepared
for a better future.

When the Allied
forces occupied Sicily,

the allies were
particularly concerned

to put people in power
who could restore order,

who were not
associated with fascism

and were not associated
with communism.

They actually installed
many mafia figures

in positions of power
in towns around Sicily.

It's not clear if they did
so intentionally or not,

or if the mafia was
particularly shrewd

in exploiting a new power vacuum

in order to return to power.

As Palermo was made the
regional capital of Sicily

and Sicily was made
an autonomous region

of the Italian state,

a great deal of government
money flowed into Palermo,

and the mafia was very
quick to follow that money.

And there was a building
boom in Palermo itself,

and the mafia went into
the real estate business

in a very major way.

Profits and power.

By the early 1960s,
the Sicilian Mafia

enjoyed an unprecedented
abundance of riches.

Inevitably, there was a
frantic scramble for power

among major mafia families,

a violent war in the
battle for domination

that laid the groundwork
for the rise of Toto Riina.

The mafia's war against itself

attracted national
attention in 1963,

when seven police
officers were murdered

in a car bomb attack.

Public outrage led to the first

large scale mafia crack
down in Italian history.

Nearly 2,000 mafia
members were arrested,

including most of
the major bosses.

Many were forced to
flee the country.

Even Toto Riina, by
now second in command

of Corleonesi boss, Luciano
Leggio, was captured,

only to be acquitted
a short time later.

The mafia soon decided to
disband its ruling commission

and assume a low profile.

They formed a temporary
governing body

of three major mafia bosses,
including Luciano Leggio.

In time, public attention
shifted elsewhere,

and with it the
government's appetite

for a continuing war
against the mafia.

Slowly, the Sicilian
Mafia began to rebuild.

In prison for life, and beset
by health and legal problems,

Luciano Leggio eventually

granted his seat on the
triumvirate to Toto Riina.

Leggio had, I think, escaped

from a medical clinic
where he was in Rome,

and then was arrested
definitively in 1974

in a hideout in Milan, and has
been in custody ever since.

So gradually, although
he never officially

was stripped of his power,

the day-to-day operation
of the Corleonesi Mafia

was then taken over by Riina.

And so, gradually with
the passing of time,

Riina became the effective
head of the Corleonesi Mafia.

Though the
mafia officially frowned

on narcotics trafficking,

an unofficial
network had developed

to take advantage of the new
market in the United States,

the market for heroin.

The authorities called
it the Pizza Connection.

Once again, Riina
would find himself

in an ideal position
at a critical time.

The Pizza Connection
case came to light

because of our relationship

with the Italian law
enforcement agencies,

and our determination
that some of the people

that we were identifying,
along with DEA,

as being involved in heroin
traffic in the United States

did not really belong

to any of the American
organized crime groups,

but in fact, could be
traced back to the homeland,

largely to Sicily and
to Southern Italy.

And we started to
develop this intelligence

that they were not
part of La Cosa Nostra,

but were a separate
entity functioning
in the United States,

and sometimes without
even the sanction

or approval of the
American La Cosa Nostra.

So we found it to be largely
an independent element

that had moved into
the United States

because of the very
lucrative drug trade here

and was operating here
autonomously, by and large.

Former assistant
US Attorney, Richard Martin,

recalls early assumptions
about the Sicilian Mafia.

The interesting phenomena
for the Sicilian Mafia

is that they were, compared
to the American Mafia,

way behind.

They were an
agrarian-based organization

that had really small
involvement in things

that we traditionally associate
the American Mafia with,

that is labor
corruption, construction,

industries like that.

The Sicilian Mafia was not
really actively involved.

What changed all of that was
the cigarette trafficking,

and then the
narcotics trafficking,

and took them from
sort of backwards,

agrarian-based feudal
sort of organization

to a multinational business

that generated
billions of dollars,

and that change had
a dramatic effect

on the structure of the
Sicilian organization.

The Sicilian Mafia

was bringing in more money
than it could launder.

One story tells of an apartment

rented simply to
store cash profits.

Once again, mafia families would
compete for ultimate power.

But now, Riina and
the Corleonesi Mafia
would leave the war.

Riina's involvement in heroin
smuggling was not direct.

He, being from Corleone,
had few natural connections

to the original
narcotics traffic,

and he didn't have boat
captains who had access,

he didn't have the
laboratories, and he didn't have

a network of people in the
United States to ship to.

What he did was to take
over those families

that had those connections

and to substitute
his own people,

or to force people who had
those connections into his ambit

by killing off their bosses

and putting in their
place his lieutenants.

Therefore, he got
control of a business

that was not naturally
one within his territory.

And by the end of 1981 or 1982,

when the Pizza Connection
was really at its height,

it was Riina who was
controlling the Sicilian Mafia.

Riina consolidated his
power in various ways.

First by trying to
undermine and isolate

certain of the more
powerful bosses in Palermo

whom he regarded as
his principal rivals

through kidnappings
that were unauthorized,

kidnapping people who
were supposed to be

under the protection
of other bosses,

by killing law
enforcement people

without the authorization
of the commission

in ways that irritated
and in some cases

humiliated other bosses,

and by cultivating
economic relations

with people inside
of other families

and fomenting discord between
the different families.

Who was this
man who placed so much fear

into so many people?

The truth about Salvatore
Riina is much more complicated

and much more chilling than
the commercial movie images

of godfathers and mafia Dons.

Riina does not
speak Italian well,

speaks no other languages,
to my knowledge,

and has really not traveled
outside of Italy and Sicily,

and made no effort
to be involved in

or interested in
international matters

other than narcotics
trafficking.

At the same time, he had,
has an extraordinary memory.

Remembers the names and places
of everything that happens,

and had a tremendous ability
to put into operation

a plan that allowed his
people to go around,

become involved in families
and take them over.

People say that he never
forgot any slight or any favor,

and would reward
those who favored him

and eliminate those
who had slighted him.

He's stocky and looks
rough, as distinct from

the people who he eliminated
on the commission,

who had been able to circulate
in legitimate society,

present themselves
as businessmen,

and Riina never did that,
never tried to do that.

He is known among
his fellow mafiosi

as an extremely
tough, cruel man,

a person not given
to random violence,

but a person of great
suspicion and instinct,

and an ability to, whose
sort of fundamental instinct

is to eliminate anyone who
might be of danger to him.

Inzerillo was one
of the key members

of the Sicilian Mafia, one
of the commission members,

and controlled a substantial
amount of the narcotics.

Inzerillo believed that by
doing business with Riina,

and by owing money to Riina,

Riina would have an economic
reason to keep him alive.

Instead, Riina,

at a meeting that was
scheduled for a payment,

killed Inzerillo,

and thereafter killed all
of his male family members,

including one of his young
sons, who at one time had said

that he would have
vengeance on Riina.

Riina, along with
one of his killers,

took that boy and
chopped off his arm,

and while the boy was
bleeding to death,

told him that you will never
use this arm to go after Riina.

He then fed the arm to the
pigs and killed the boy.

That was the kind of
message of violence

that had a tremendous impact
on the families in Palermo.

And even though Riina's
group was smaller in numbers

and less well known,
they were successful

and took over the mafia.

Riina's
rule went against

all of the traditions
of the mafia.

Killing children and women
was only part of his strategy.

Turning family against family,

making a travesty of
loyalties within families,

and trafficking narcotics
further undermined the culture

of solidarity and omerta,
the code of silence

that had protected
the mafia for so long.

Though the origins
of the Sicilian Mafia

are lost in history,
many historians suggest

that the fierce blood ties
that characterize the mafia

were forged through
the many invasions

Sicily suffered for
hundreds of years.

Secret societies formed
to maintain a resistance

and a measure of control
over their homeland.

Riina's destruction of this
ancient spirit of brotherhood,

which had insulated mafia
members for generations,

changed the very nature
of the organization.

Through fear,
through intimidation,

through murder and treachery,

Riina's reign of
terror had taken hold.

Mafia involvement in
refining and smuggling heroin

had a dramatic consequence
on the people of Italy.

Deaths from overdose
rose from eight in 1974

to thousands by the late 1980s,

with an estimated
200,000 Italian addicts.

The Sicilian Mafia had helped
to create a social crisis.

This was a problem
when suddenly

the sons of wealthy
families across Italy,

the sons of government officials

and daughters of business
people and bureaucrats

were finding syringes
in their homes

and having children
die of overdose.

This became a problem

that was too big for the
government to ignore.

Add to that the fact

that in order to protect
this new business,

the mafia was beginning to kill

over curious police officials

who were looking for
heroin refineries

and trying to crack
down on the drug trade,

and add to this the
fact that the Corleones

were beginning to kill
the other mafia bosses

and the hundreds of people

who stood behind
those mafia bosses

in order to consolidate
those problems,

and suddenly you begin to
have an awareness in Italy

that this problem is much
bigger than you ever imagined.

The government's first
steps were tentative.

The dangers both
politically and physically

made success uncertain.

In a climate of great danger

and a history of
violent retaliation,

a native son of Palermo

was brought into the new
mafia investigations.

Giovanni Falcone led a
new kind of investigation

that soon drew the attention
of the Italian people,

members of the mafia,
and Toto Riina himself.

He started out as a
bankruptcy investigator

looking into fraudulent
bankruptcies,

and used those same techniques
of financial investigation

to attack the mafia
by tracing the money

and proving that
individuals who had no jobs

and no legitimate
source of income

could not reasonably
have acquired the
multimillion dollars

that were passing
through their accounts

and reflected in
their properties.

He was able to trace
movements of narcotics

that were seized, connect
them to those people,

show the bank transfers,

and demonstrate that
the Sicilian Mafia

was actually in charge of
traffic to the United States.

Because at that time it
was impossible to get members

of the Sicilian Mafia to talk,

the fact that the mafia began
to go into the heroin business

meant that it had
to deal with people

outside of its organization
who were much less reliable

than people within
the organization,

so that, for example, they
would have to corrupt,

let's say, an airline employee

who would agree to bring a bag
from one country to another.

That person, because that person

wasn't a professional criminal
and was easy to scare,

you arrest that person
and you threaten

to keep them in jail for
the rest of their life,

and suddenly they're
talking to the police

and telling you
everything they know.

So he would take advantage
of all of these people

in order to find new
areas of weakness

within the organization,

ways of breaking
into the organization

through its expansion,

and he did that very effectively

in some of these early
cases and won convictions.

At the same time that
Falcone was pursuing

the heroin connection from the
financial side from Sicily,

we in the United
States were pursuing

the same traffickers up
the chain of distribution

through and back to Sicily.

And in 1982, Falcone
came to New York

and I was introduced to him

with my friend and thereafter
trial partner, Louis Freeh,

and we saw in him
something quite different

from what we expected.

We saw a professional,
intelligent,
well-prepared magistrate

who knew this organization
better than we did,

and we saw in him
the possibility of
exchanging information,

and for the first time really,

putting together an
international effort

to combat this organization.

The Italian-American
Working Group was formed

to exchange operational
case information,

and to learn better
from each other

how we could better penetrate
these seemingly connected

drug trafficking organizations.

It evolved into an apparatus
at the highest policy level

where the United
States and Italy

coordinated their activities.

It resulted in the
Maxi trials in Italy,

the Pizza Connection cases,

and even some of
the commission cases

here in the United States.

In his 30-year
career with the FBI,

former Associate Deputy
Director of Investigations,

Oliver "Buck" Revell,
was deeply involved

in the anti-mafia investigation.

The very first meeting
of the Working Group

was right after the
assassination of
General Dalla Chiesa,

who was a hero in Italy, and
was the prefect of Palermo,

and he had been
killed by the mafia,

and that was weighing
heavily on our heads

when we came together in
Quantico in October of 1982.

And I remember the
eloquent speeches

that the Italians made
about how they needed help

because this menace
was so strong

that even their senior
officials were at risk,

and we were very empathetic
to that need and that concern.

Dr. Falcone was
particularly effective

in conveying the
concern of the Italians

that their whole system
was so penetrated

they needed help to cleanse
themselves of this menace.

Even as
the mafia struck back,

investigations on both
sides of the Atlantic

began to gain momentum.

1984 marked a
dramatic breakthrough

in the capture of
Tommaso Buscetta,

a former high ranking member
of the Sicilian Mafia,

whose hatred of Salvatore Riina

drove him to a
stunning decision.

Buscetta had been
a member of the mafia

since shortly
after World War II,

and had seen the mafia
change over those years,

and when the war
broke out between

two factions of the mafia,

he was allied with the
faction that was losing,

and even though he
tried to leave Palermo,

go to South America
and escape the battle,

a lot of his family
members were killed.

Therefore, when he
was extradited back
to Italy in 1984,

he was fearful that

more of his family
members would be killed,

and he decided that the mafia

had betrayed its own principles,

and that the way
that he could best

protect his family and
himself was to cooperate.

But Buscetta
would speak to only one man,

a fellow Sicilian,
Giovanni Falcone.

Though they had never met,

Falcone's reputation was
well known in the mafia.

He was a man who wouldn't quit.

He was a man who
would finish the job.

What happened when the two
of these people got together

was that they saw in each other,

one, the information that
could destroy the mafia,

and the other, a
person who was capable

of mounting the attack,

and they treated each
other with great respect,

and I think had a
good understanding,
each of the other.

Certainly Falcone never
excused Buscetta's conduct,

but treated Buscetta
with understanding
and thoughtfulness,

and gave all of the serious
attention to what he said

that it deserved.

Early on in
their relationship,

Buscetta asked Falcone
for a cigarette,

since he was a
prisoner he didn't have
access to cigarettes,

and Falcone gave
him the cigarette,

and gave him the remainder
of the cigarettes

in the package he
had already opened.

And at a later time,
Buscetta explained to him

that had Falcone given him an
unopened pack of cigarettes,

that might've seemed too much

and almost humiliating
to Buscetta.

But since the pack
was already opened,

it was somehow an
acceptable gift.

This seems very trivial,

but these are ways in which two
people measured one another,

and Falcone instinctively
understood who Buscetta was,

what culture he had come from,

and what the way of behaving
with Buscetta should be.

He was the first
Sicilian Mafia member

to ever testify in a
court of law, in Italy,

against the mafia.

But more, he identified more
than 400 members of the mafia,

drew an ornagram of the
entire organization,

identified the members
of the commission,

explained how they operated,
explained how the structure

made those people who
were on the commission

responsible legally for
what the soldiers did.

And through Buscetta,

Falcone was able to
structure an indictment

that made all of those
people responsible

who had ordered the killings
of hundreds of mafia members,

politicians, judges,
and police officers

in the preceding 10 years.

His evidence simply opened
the skin of the organization

so that at one time

they were able to identify
the entire structure.

Buscetta gave investigators

their first look into the
structure of the mafia.

He explained how the lowest
soldier on the street

was part of a team
headed by a captain.

The captains in turn reported
to the family leadership.

There was an underboss, a
boss who headed the family,

and perhaps one or two
consiglieri, or counselors.

The 30 families
that ruled Palermo

were divided into 10 districts.

Each district consisted
of three families.

Each district would
elect a representative

to serve on the commission
that ruled the mafia,

which was responsible
for laying down policy,

mediating disputes, and
handing down decisions

regarding important murders.

Though the idea was to create
a democratic organization,

Buscetta explained, in practice,

authority was actually imposed

by the man who had taken
control, Toto Riina.

For the first time,
prosecutors could prove

a direct connection between
the actions of mafia soldiers

and the rule of the beast.

Buscetta's confessions
drove a vast new crackdown

on the Sicilian Mafia,

leading to the arrest of
hundreds of mafia members.

Some would follow his example

and become government witnesses.

Law enforcement's
grasped tightened

as Italy prepared for a trial
of unprecedented proportions.

Visiting Palermo at the
time of the Maxi Trial

was looking at a
city under siege.

There were extra law enforcement

brought in from all over
Italy to help supplement

the law enforcement personnel
that resided in Sicily.

Judges, investigators were
under constant armed guard

with bodyguards.

You could go and
see the streets,

could see a street
where a judge lived

because the whole
street was closed off.

But Salvatore
Riina wasn't concerned.

The government's efforts
had been defeated before,

and certainly would
be defeated again.

But what he didn't recognize
is that what had happened

during the period of time that
Falcone was after the mafia

is that a great public
support had developed

behind doing something
about the mafia.

People were fed up
with what was going on.

They were fed up with
people like Riina.

They had lost that
sense of support

that the mafia had
traditionally had,

where the mafia
helps poor people

and helps them solve problems,

and looks out for them,

helps them in their
times of need and so on.

The mafia was not
being seen that way.

The mafia was being seen as
a predatory organization,

and that the only people being
helped were those themselves,

and perhaps some of the
highest level people

in the Italian government.

Government
resources poured into Palermo

as prosecutors
prepared to undertake

perhaps the largest
trial in Italian history.

A fortified
stadium-like courthouse

was built to protect
participants,

tanks and army troops
surrounded the perimeter.

The prosecutor's
office was provided

with all the support it needed

to make certain the
trial would move forward.

If planes were needed
to take prosecutors

from Palermo to Brussels,

or from Palermo to Thailand,
or Palermo to New York,

the plane was there.

These people now had 24-hour
security around them.

There was a helicopter

that was surveying
the streets of Palermo

on the routes that
Falcone would travel

to and from his home.

There was a sense that these
people were too well protected

to be assassinated,

and therefore, all of this
created the atmosphere

that encouraged people to talk,

and that allowed these
people to work undisturbed

and be able to
bring the trial off.

They had cages built
for the defendants,

they had glass booths, they
had hundreds of guards.

It was just tremendously
secure situation

to try these mafia members.

And the mafia members
throughout the trial

would spit at the authorities
and yell obscenities,

and in one case,

one of them actually
stapled his lips together

to show he would not
break the code of omerta,

the code of silence.

But it was a tremendously
successful government attack

on organized crime,

and much of it was because
of Thomas Buscetta.

A lot of the information that
came out of this also linked

government and industrial
figures in Italy to the mafia.

So it was a turning point.

The 1987 Maxi Trial

would prove to be
a major victory.

Of the 450 defendants,
over 300 were convicted.

Riina, though a fugitive
since shortly after

being freed from prison in 1969,

was convicted in absentia,

and shared the sentence of
many leading mafia bosses,

life in prison.

What had seemed impossible
only a few short years before

was now a reality.

Assured that appeals
will be heard by parties

favorable to the Sicilian Mafia,

Salvatore Riina
remained confident.

Some convictions
were overturned,

and Buscetta's assertion
of a ruling commission

was brought into doubt.

Riina meanwhile
continued to live freely,

seemingly beyond the
reach of law enforcement.

What happened
after the Maxi Trial

is very strange
and very indicative

of the way things went
in Italy at that time.

The trial ended in
this great victory,

and yet, the head of the
investigative office of Palermo

decided to retire
after the trial,

and was assured by government
sources that Giovanni Falcone

would replace him as
head of the office,

guaranteeing continuity in
the mafia investigations.

Instead, an elderly magistrate
on the verge of retirement,

with no experience
in mafia trials,

was made the head of his office

and Falcone was rejected
for the position.

And so, here finally Italy
finds a group of prosecutors

who are willing and
able, and successful

in prosecuting the mafia,

and instead of being rewarded

with positions of
greater responsibility,

more resources to continue
what they're doing,

they are denigrated publicly,

actually put under investigation

for completely frivolous
and meaningless charges,

and their life is made
almost impossible,

so that the investigations
under this new

and very ill-prepared chief of
staff come to a virtual halt.

Falcone
was frustrated.

Though his work had been
hailed during the Maxi Trial,

now it seemed that the
lessons of the 1960s

had been forgotten.

Riina and the mafia had nothing
to fear from the government,

and certainly nothing
to fear from Falcone.

When it was learned that Falcone

had been invited to work in Rome

with the new Minister
of Justice, his
removal from Palermo

was seen as proof of
his ultimate failure.

In Rome however, Falcone would
prove even more dangerous

to the mafia than ever before.

He began to plan an even wider
assault against the mafia,

and when the Italian
Supreme Court

declined to reverse a
Maxi Trial conviction,

sealing the fate of
hundreds of jailed mafiosi,

it was Riina's strategy, not
Falcone's that had failed.

Mafia members were furious

and became like a
kind of wounded beast

after the convictions.

They were furious.

They were furious at
their friends in power

whom they felt
had let them down,

and they were determined
to make them pay.

Riina began his new
campaign of violence

with the murder of Salvatore
Lima in March, 1992,

the most powerful
politician in Sicily,

and one of the mafia's
closest friends in government.

It was Riina's warning to the
Christian Democratic Party

whose policy of peaceful
coexistence with the mafia

was now politically unworkable,

they had refused to
protect the mafia

at the time of its
most important trial.

Less than three months later,

the Sicilian Mafia
took another step

in its escalating battle
against the government.

It proved to be Toto
Riina most costly mistake.

For Giovanni Falcone,
receiving a death threat

was part of the job,

including at this in
this conference Rome

only two weeks before his death.

But threats wouldn't
deter him from his work.

Every time we had a meeting,

I would pull him aside and we
would talk about his safety,

and he assured me that
he was taking precautions

and that he had an
excellent bodyguard,

and he had an entire group
assigned to him for protection,

and that he was doing all
that was humanly possible

to protect his life, because
he knew that he was a target,

but that he had to go forward.

Anybody who knew
what he was doing

and what had happened
to his two prior bosses,

who had been executed,

knew that he was in
danger all the time.

He was protected by bodyguards
and bulletproof cars,

lived in an apartment that
was really more like a bunker.

His office could only be entered
through a series of doors,

with cameras looking
at who was entering.

But he was
philosophical about it.

He was certainly not fatalistic.

Believed that the
enemy was after him,

but wanted to accomplish what
he could, as long as he could.

The mafia had planned
this killing very carefully.

They had people in Rome

who were able to communicate
by cellular phone

the moment that Falcone
left his office,

and someone waiting
at the airport

could then communicate
to people in Palermo,

the plane has taken off and
it's heading toward Palermo.

There were people waiting
outside the airport

to signal his arrival.

And then, a couple of
miles from the airport,

a squad of mafiosi had placed

an enormous quantity
of explosives in a
kind of drain pipe

that was underneath
the highway itself,

so that then, on a
signal from someone else,

they then detonated
this truly massive

quantity of explosives.

Falcone was murdered on
Memorial Day weekend in 1992.

I was at one of my
best friend's weddings.

I was going to be his
best man that day,

and I got a phone
call from Louis Freeh,

who had heard the news,

and I was upset, and
naturally distressed,

but not terribly surprised.

Although we thought that
by taking the position

that he had taken about
a year before in Rome,

that he had left Palermo,

he was having an impact on
justice nationally in Italy,

and that perhaps he
had escaped the mafia.

I think he should be
remembered as a hero,

and not just for law
enforcement, but for everybody.

His life and his career
proved the efforts of one man

can make a difference
in the lives of people.

He was a remarkable man,

a man who truly
believed in justice.

Public reaction to
the death of Giovanni Falcone

took on the dimensions
of a national tragedy.

Disbelief, shock, and
outrage swept the country.

It seemed as if Riina and the
mafia were winning the war.

People blamed the
government in part,

and it was part of stimulating

a kind of popular and
civic revolt in Palermo,

in many cities in Sicily,

and in many cities
throughout Italy.

For example,

in a series of demonstrations
in Palermo itself,

women around the city began
to hang sheets, in some cases,

with written banners on them,

outside of their windows
and on their balconies

where they normally
hung their laundry,

and these sheets were
meant to signify protest

against the killings.

And they vowed that
they would continue

hanging out these sheets
in these signs of protest

until the killers of Falcone
were brought to justice.

Buscetta talked
again to prosecutors

and began to talk about
members of the mafia

who had connections with
politicians in Sicily,

in a way that he had
chosen not to do in 1984

because, as he said to Falcone

and is included in
his questioning,

he didn't believe that
the system in Italy

was ready to digest
that information.

Buscetta's new
revelations were astounding,

reaching through
Parliament and implicating

the office of seven-term
Prime Minister Andreotti.

To continue Falcone's work,

another legendary
mafia prosecutor

was appointed as
his replacement.

A childhood friend who
had worked with Falcone

through years of investigating
the mafia, Paolo Borsellino,

who shared both
Falcone's determination
to win the struggle

and the fierce support
of the Italian people.

But two months later,

as Borsellino arrived
outside his mother's home,

another explosion
rocked Palermo.

As stunned Italy watched
yet another funeral,

and a sense of even
greater outrage took hold.

Government officials
who attended the funeral

as Borsellino bodyguards were
assaulted by furious crowds.

The bodyguard service
itself rebelled against

the government's poor
efforts to protect them.

The public demanded the
strongest response yet

against the mafia.

Immediately, 7,000 army
soldiers were sent to Sicily

to show that the government and
not the mafia was in charge.

New laws were passed

that created a witness
protection program in Italy,

encouraging hundreds
of mafia members

to become government witnesses.

So that you had two
categories of people

who turned against Riina.

Members of the losing faction
who had managed to survive

cooperated against him,

and members of
the winning group,

or those people who
had been co-opted

because they were part
of the narcotics traffic.

But the most interesting group

and the people who had
the freshest information

were his bodyguards and drivers

who feared that they
were about to be killed,

or learned that they
were about to be killed,

and decided the only
way to save themselves

was to cooperate against Riina,

so that as time
went on, he created

an increasing number of people

who were ready to
cooperate against him.

Finally,
on January 15th, 1993,

with little fanfare
and no resistance,

police arrested
Salvatore "Toto" Riina

as he drove unarmed through
the streets of Palermo.

At first, he claimed to
be an itinerant farm hand

on visit to the city,

but soon it was clear,
this was the beast.

In February, 1999,
Salvatore "Toto" Riina

was sentenced to life in prison

for the murder of
Paolo Borsellino.

Added to convictions for the
murder of Giovanni Falcone

and many other mafia crimes,

Riina's fate was sealed
several times over.

Though he will never
see freedom again,

the mafia is still
very much alive.

As we move into the
late 20th century,

the mafia really is
in a bit of disarray,

not only in Sicily, but
in America and other areas

that have been basically
sources of power.

New crime fighting
techniques by the government

have put some of the
leaders behind jail.

As they farther and farther away

from their traditional
roots, a lot has been lost

as far as the relationships
between the mafia groups,

as well as this predilection
of informers to come out.

This is totally against
the traditional code.

And so, if anything, this new
phenomenon of the informant

has allowed basically the mafia

to turn in on itself
and destroy itself.

Salvatore Riina lived
free for over 20 years,

confident in the mafia's control
and secure in his freedom,

never betrayed by those
who believed the myth

that the mafia defended the poor

from those who
would exploit them.

In his bloody quest for power,

Riina destroyed that
myth, perhaps forever.

Would the Sicilian Mafia return
to the position it once had?

Recent history has shown
that organized crime

can be defeated,

but only if law enforcement
continues the struggle,

and only if the
people demand it.

I'm Robert Stack.

Thanks for joining us.