The FBI Agents Who Told Sonny Black the Truth About Donnie Brasco

In the summer of 1981, days after the FBI pulled Joe Pistone out of the Bonanno family, three agents climbed the stairs above a Williamsburg bar to tell Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano that the man he knew as Donnie Brasco was one of theirs. They brought a photograph, a business card and an offer. This is the case file on that visit, told from the side of the agents who made it and the prosecutors who followed it into court. The dates alone cannot explain why Sonny Black refused the card, what the Bureau was really trying to do in that room, or how one conversation was still being argued in a Brooklyn courtroom in 2004. THE CASE, IN ORDER: September 1976 - Joe Pistone goes undercover in the Bonanno family as jewel thief Donnie Brasco July 1981 - The FBI ends the operation after Brasco is handed a murder contract July 1981 - Agents Doug Fencl, Jim Kinne and Jerry Loar visit Napolitano above the Motion Lounge August 1981 - Napolitano is summoned to a meeting on Staten Island November 1981 - A federal grand jury indicts the Motion Lounge crew August 1982 - Pistone testifies in public for the first time, under his own name July 2004 - A Brooklyn jury convicts Bonanno boss Joseph Massino THE RECORD: United States v. Napolitano (S.D.N.Y. 1982) and the Motion Lounge wiretap affidavit, Doug Fencl's sworn testimony at the 2004 Massino trial, the trial testimony of Salvatore Vitale and of Joseph Massino himself, New York Times coverage of the 1982 trial, and Joe Pistone's memoir Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia. #DonnieBrasco #SonnyBlack #BonannoFamily