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Matt. In your book The Life We Chose, you described sort of the evolution of the mob families in that part of Pennsylvania, and these mob bosses who emerged and rose to prominence, say in the early nineteen hundreds in these Italian communities, places like a Scranton and Pittston. They weren't exactly folk heroes or benefactors or protectors. They explored the hell out of other Italians, the Italian coal miners right about. They extorted small businesses. I mean, they were
bad guys. It was only much later somebody like Russell Buffalino becomes sort of admired, feared, but admired. Correct.
Yeah, they were brutal to the local communities in the early nineteen hundreds, mostly through the mines, the coal mines there. They took over the unions. They ran all the unions there, all the coal unions, and if anyone ever pushed up against them, and you'd see a lot of violence. Then of course came bootlegging in the nineteen twenties. It was very,
very violent at that time. It wasn't until later when Russell took over in the late nineteen forties, now, you know, don't get me wrong, and they were still brutal and violent. In fact, Russell was described in nineteen sixty two or sixty three by USNIC Committee as being one of the most powerful and violent members of organized crime in the country. So Russell had and did his own share of violence too.
But there were a million stories of just kindnesses that you know, Russell from Russell, whether it would be helping out a business or even just helping out a neighbor fix a roof or give them the money to do something like that. So they turned. They did become sort of like folk heroes more towards the fifties and sixties.
So there's Big Billy in his teens seeing Russell Buffalino as associates, driving great cars, living a good life. They're big shots. He comes to admire that, right Billy.
Yeah, Billy does get into as he's reading the book, you see this transformation. There were really two parts to Billy's story. One was initially the first ten years or so way he's an observer, he's just at Russell's hip and he's watching everything. And then when Russell goes to prison in the late nineteen seventies. That's when Billy becomes a participant, and that's when his power and his influence grows.
And we see Billy and you know a number of different scenes with a number of different people, you know, including Donald Trump of all people. Right, But it was through his relationship with Russell that led to those moments. And Billy, did you know the thing? For Bill, there were two things. Was a the relationship with Russell and the world that Russell opened up for him. And it was this incredible world where you are meeting celebrities, you're
meeting athletes, you're meeting politicians. It's a world he never ever, ever would have been privy to had it not been for Russell.
You described the rise of Buffalino in the mafia. How it is that he came to know all these key players all over the country. I guess from the early days of bootlegging is where he made associations with a lot of the ones who became prominent mafia bosses.
Yeah, he did so, Russell. Russell was very, very smart. The one thing I've always heard about Russell was he was a brilliant man and he probably actually most likely would have been accomplished in any sort of business or industry he had set his mind to. In this case, he happened to be a member of organized crime. But he was very smart, knew how to handle people. And even though you know, we talked a little bit about some of the flashier parts of life in that world,
you know, Russell was very low key. His house we did, I did all the interviews with Billy Buffalino's old house in Kingston, Pennsylvania. When Russell Russell died in ninety four. His wife died in two thousand and six. When she passed away, she left the house to Billy's son, who happens to be named Russell. And so we ended up doing every single interview in the whole Buffalo home. And it's just it's a ranch style home and a nondescript
neighborhood in Kingston, Pennsylvania. And it's actually it looks as if it looks like it did back in the nineteen seventies with the furniture and whatnot. It's like a museum piece right now. But Russell was not showy. He lived by that code. He tried to instill that in Bill, and Bill ended up living in the same house. He's still in the same house that he's lived in for about forty years.
That's amazing. So from what you describe in this book, I know you wrote on a whole other book about Buffalino. But he had his fingers in a lot of different businesses what appeared to be legit business that also became fronts for other things that he was doing. Can you describe some of those.
He was big well, obviously he was thinking things like gambling. He was also big though in northeastern Pennsylvania in dress manufacturing. He owned the factories that made the dresses for the New York companies. You know, Russell spent four days a week in New York. He had an apartment in New York that he had maintained for many, many years. And so he had his hands not just in trst manufacturing. He had his hands in jewelry, He had his hands
in loan sharking. He has his hands in many businesses, and of course, as I mentioned earlier, he had his hands in the Teamsters Union. But Russell was also Russell was also known as you know, the mobs Negotiator, which was a title that Billy picked up later, where Russell would be called and to settle all kinds of disagreements, but not just on the East coast, but also on the West coast, in the South, in Florida. He spent a lot of time down in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, hit two houses.
Down there, and Cuba.
And in Cuba in the nineteen fifties, which was his situation in Cuba when Cuba was taken over by cash Show, Russell had fled and he left behind a million dollars. And it was that million dollars that set the stage for his recruitment as I written a book by the CIA and he's so called mafia plots that later came to play a role in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
You know, I didn't know until reading this book that these Bob guys Buffalino had given financial support to Castro. I know that they had, you know, I knew that that historically they had had sort of sealed their fate by siding with Batista, But I didn't know they gave financial support to Castro as sort of to cover their bases in case he took over.
I did realized that either I had heard of it. I didn't realize just how deeply that went. Russell had been close to Batista, and he had been so close to him that he would bring Batista's kids up to Pennsylvania for the summer under his protection. But when things went south for Batista, they did play the other side with Fidel and not just with money, but with arms. There were scenes in the book where there were arms
that were going heading to Cuba from Pittsburgh. Russell had te ties in Pittsburgh friends there, so but of course Castro was playing with the mob too and had no intentions of ever letting them get their casinos back, which led to all kinds of turbulence in the late fifties early in nineteen sixties.
Yeah, this imagery is right out of Godfather too. So the real life guy's Meyer, Lanski, Modelitz Santostrau, Picante, Carlos Marcello, all those guys have interest in those casinos and it was like a gold mine. It was, it was perfect for him, and then they lose it all and it leads to all kinds of plots and conspiracies that came to bite back to bite everyone. You know, Castro becomes a target of CIA plots, to murderm and the mob gets involved, and can you describe some of that?
So Russell Russell, the CIA learned that Russell had left behind a million dollars when he fled in nineteen fifty nine, and they are in the midst of their plans. You know, the CIA at that time was just a rogue agency that took orders from no one, and so they had recruited it actually recruited two sets of organized crime figures. But in this case they had reached out to Jimmy hoffa tou They knew half of his friends with Buffaloo. It was half of who reached out to Buffalino, and
Buffalino agreed to help them. Basically his help was in terms of surveillance and helping them with geography and roads. But it was leave for the assassination of Fidel Castro as well as the Bay of Pigs invasion. And when the Bay of Pigs invasion did the way it did, members of organized client people like Russell, were furious because they thought, because they were printing money in Cuba, it was a gold mine and if they had lost it, and they felt that they were going to get it back,
and they did it. So they were very angry, very angry, and it did set the stage for a lot of speculation, you know, with the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and who was involved and was the mob involved? And Billy and I talked about it, and Billy did have some answers to this. It wasn't necessarily definitive enough for me to want to include it in a book, you know, unless he knew exactly who the shooters were. I wasn't really going to put it in anyway. I didn't want
it because the book was so rich. I didn't want to take away from it, right, I didn't want it. I didn't want people looking in and go up, there's just another conspiracy theory.
Yeah, well, I did want to ask you about that. I could imagine that you would avoid that conversation. Did you have to approach that kind of gingerly?
No, we were just talking about it, and he had answers for it, and I just you know, which may come out at another time. It's not they're not definitive, but it does side with one particular theory involving the mob, and so it was interesting, but it wasn't. I just did not I just not feel comfortable with including it in the book. I mean the book is it's I wanted the book to be more about his first hand accounts, is what he saw, what he did, which is you
know how the book basically rolls out. And this was more about things that some other things that Russell had spoken to him about. You have to remember also, these weren't like conversations that he would have it with Russell, Especially in the beginning, you never ask questions, you know, if you're riding he's driving Russell in the car, and he never asked questions about business. Us. Who wants to tell you something, he will tell you something. You know.
It became much later on where those conversations became more two way conversations.
You do touch on sort of the plots to kill Castro and how the CIA did recruit the mob to
do this. There were some meetings I've reported on on myself, meetings here in Las Vegas set up by a guy named Robert Mayhew used to work with the FBI and Sam g and Conna, Johnny ROSSELLI or they got together here and started talking about how to do it, and then there's it almost gets into comedy about some of the attempts that were made on Castro's life and how they tried to make his beard fall out and poisonous food,
and none of those ever happened. And it raises a lot of speculation whether those attempts on Castro might have inspired Castro or or the mob itself to go ahead and kill JFK RFK. We do know that Johnny Roselli got killed, Sam g and Conna got killed. Do you think that was because they what they knew about these various plots and they might spill the beans.
So this takes us to nineteen seventy five in Jimmy Haffe's disappearance in the Church Committee, the Senate committee that was investigating these CIA mafia plots. You know, up until June seventy five, Halfa had wanted to take over his union again after getting out of prison in seventy one, and he and Russell had been very very good friends.
In Russell and others told Haafa to sit back, don't do it, because the mob with the union was in different hands right now, and everyone, meaning the mobsters, were comfortable with it. They didn't want half It to come back, but Hafa insisted, and so it was Russell that kept
Jimmy Hoffer alive because other people wanted him gone. But it was in June of nineteen seventy five when Time magazine outed Russell with a story about his involvement in the CIA mafia plots that were being investigated, and it was the first time Russell had been connected to them publicly. And so what happened within almost rapid fire, was two weeks after Russell was how did by Time magazine? Uh Sam g and Conna disappears, Jimmy Hoffa disappears four weeks later,
and then the following year, Johnny ROSELLI disappears. And so I talked to Billy about it, and you know, we talked about what happened with Hafa, and you know, there was a meeting that he had gone to and who and who was involved in that meeting And I said to him and he didn't. He loved to this day, he loves Russell. And I said, was Russell involved in any of this? And he's in his first reaction would be no. And then when we pushed, I pushed a
little bit. I'm like, well, could these guys have done anything regarding Halfa or anyone else? If Russell didn't give his blessing, and so Russell had to be involved.
Yes, yeah, yeah, there's no way that the mob kills Haffa without Russell Buffalino sign it off.
On it correct, because because of just how close they were, and more importantly, because of how powerful Russell was. But this the the what I did learn and what's in the book was the person who was the source for these stories about Russell being involved in the CIA mafia plots was a former CIA agent who leaked the information to Time magazine as well as the UH to a
newspaper up in northern California. And I did speak to the reporter who wrote that story UH, and you know, he told me who he told me who his source was, and I was kind of blown away. I didn't realize it was a CIA source that gave him that information.
So the other mob guys that got rubbed out, they weren't the leak.
Yeah. Well, Russell thought he was going to be subpoena. And we also spoke to a member of one of the surviving members of the Church Committee investigation team, and they said that Russell was not going to from what he could remember or Russell wasn't going to be subpoened. So Russell basically acted, was acting with caution. He you know, it wasn't that he knew he was going to be subpoenaed. He thought he was going to be at the end of the day, he wasn't going to be.
I can see somebody saying, well, why take a chance.
These guys, Yeah, well that's how That's how they thought in those days, why take a chance, And that's basically how they lived. So it was fascinating in terms of how Billy described things. It was fascinating in terms of learning some of these other who some of these other sources were and I didn't know about. And it kinds of and the joy is a really full picture in
terms of or fuller picture. We don't know who pulled the trigger to kill Jimmy Hoffa, but we do know now who ordered it in that it was Tony Provenzano and Anthony Sillerno from New York with the blessing of Russell Buffalino. And we also know who didn't kill Jimmy Hoffa, which was Frank Sharing according to Billy, because going to Bill that was complete fiction and Bill actually had proof of that.
Yeah, I think we have about two minutes before we go to a break, So I want to jump into The Irishman the Frank Scheron story, because we've covered it here on this program before, but we don't have time to do it. I do want to ask you about the portrayal of Russell Buffalino in The Irishman, other than the murder of Hafa, because I would think it was he came up pretty well in that. I mean, as a man who's was wisdom, had wisdom and was respected.
I would think that that part of the portrayal would have been okay with Big Billy.
Yeah, Billy didn't necessarily have any issues with the performance. What he did have an issue with was how Russell was perceived. He didn't come off as being this all powerful boss. He kind of came off as being in almost an underlink to some of the other bosses like in Philadelphia and in New York, and that grated arm Bill. But the thing that really bothered him the most was Frank she and Frank Sharon's story. You know, that was something that he very much wanted to set the record straight on.
You're write in your book about one point the FEDS some documents that they had where they describe Buffalino as an underboss to one of the other mob guys, which really graded on everybody who knew him.
Yeah, even Laurenforcement didn't get it right, as you seeing the book, and he didn't get it right for many, many years. And it's just a testament to the Mob being able to keep some things quiet and secretive. It's very hard trying to pierce that world. But as far as you know, they were successful in some areas with some families, but with the Buffalinos, it was never any definitive information. And frankly, this is really the first time we get to see what was going on with that family.
A lot of great information, first time I've heard a lot of this stuff in the life We Chose by Matt Burkback about the last secrets of America's most powerful mafia family.
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