This past Sunday night CBS coming off a ratings extravaganza with its coverage of the return of Tiger Woods to the masters, went platinum. They hyped all weekend long the exclusive interview that correspondent Steve Kroft would have with John Gotti Junior on “60 minutes”. Instead of the shotgun tough Q and A’s they used to be known for, Steve Kroft acted as if he were in awe of John Gotti Junior. At points, he was smiling and laughing it up so much, I expected Victoria Gotti Sr. to come out and start serving him cannoli. When Steve Kroft finally asked if he had been the acting boss of the Gambino Crime Family, Gotti’s attorney jumped in and issued a denial. Charles Carnesi said that Gotti was only guilty of being a loyal son. In reality if Steve Kroft had referred to the court transcripts of any of the four trials, he would have seen that Gotti’s lawyers consistently acknowledged to the jury that in fact Gotti Junior had been a Capo in the Gambino crime family and in his father’s absence served as the Acting Bosss. In many reports filed in the New York City tabloids, reporters wrote extensively during the trials of this legal strategy.

It seems that now for the first time Gotti and his attorney Carnesi have created a new ranking system for the mafia. There has always been the Capo di Tutti Capi, “the boss of all bosses”, the Don, who is the head of the organized crime family, The Underboss- the second-in-command, “the consigliere”- the number three leader in the organized crime family, but now John Gotti Junior has created the position of “loyal son” which I’ve renamed, “The Sonsigliere” - a beneficiary of nepotism who has window shades over his eyes, cotton balls in his ears and a zipper closed tight over his mouth, usually a mamaluke.

John Gotti Junior went on to say that his father John Gotti Sr. really hated money; that instead of the two-fisted, degenerate gambler that we knew him to be, wearing a $2,000.00 Armani suit, with a Brioni tie, he was really more like Saint Francis of Assisi, realizing that eventually “you will die or as in his case go to jail and lose all of your worldly possessions”. Gotti’s revisionism was left unchallenged by Steve Kroft, and then as if to rationalize his criminal ways, he blamed it on the culture of growing up in Howard Beach. He said, “we will we were all told never call the cops and that everybody around looks to break the law”. What “Un disgraziato!!!!” In growing up, I lived for a time in Howard Beach and Ozone Park. I had many relatives and acquaintances who also grew up there and some who continue to live there. They’re cops, firefighters, teachers, sanitation workers and hardworking honest people, who sometimes work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. John Gotti Junior went around all day with his fellow gavones, scheming by any means necessary to take money from hardworking people. The geriatric, espresso-sipping, psychotic killers of organized time, hung out at “The Bergin Hunt and Fish (and shoot human beings) club” planning all day long to take what wasn’t there’s and along the way gave Italian-American people a bad name.

Finally, John Gotti Junior jumped at the opportunity Steve Kroft gave him to make some type of justification for the murders his father committed and ordered. He said that his father was part of the streets. He swore that was his life he swore, “I’m gonna live and die by the rules of the streets, a coat of the streets” and everybody that Gotti Sr. is accused of killing, everyone he may have killed, wanted to kill or tried to kill was a part of that same street. According to him, they were a part of the same world, the same code and his father’s always said in his mind “you break rules you end up in a dumpster.”

Well then John Gotti Junior, explain what rule I broke because this is America and not Sicily. During John Gotti Sr’s fourth trial, I spoke out on the radio against his actions and the reign of terror conducted by the Gambino crime family. For that, I was shot with, hollow point bullets in the back of a taxi cab on June 19th of 1992. The Gambino hit man Michael Iannotti, who shot me, was given twenty years in Federal prison for the shooting.

Court testimony indicated that your father ordered that I be shut up and that you followed his orders to the letter. You beat the rap on technicalities and eventually your father died in prison and went straight to hell without an asbestos suit, and now we’re 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 John Gotti Junior anti-snitch academy, where the motto will be, “snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches”. OOOOOHHHHFAHHHHH!!!!!!

Curtis Sliwa

Founder and President of the Guardian Angels

Radio Talk Show Host M-F AM 970 “The Apple”