Posted on 10/17/2002 10:23:32 AM PDT by Coleus
Informant: Top cop mob-friendly Wednesday, October 16, 2002
By WENDY RUDERMAN AND CLINT RILEY Trenton Bureau
A confidential informant linked to organized crime told a state police investigator that he feared for his life if Newark Public Safety Director Joseph Santiago became the state police superintendent, state police documents show.
On Jan. 11, the day Governor-elect James E. McGreevey announced his intention to nominate Santiago for the state police post, the informant told an investigator that he was afraid Santiago would have access to state police files on informants.
"I'm dead if he sees who I am," the informant told Detective David Kushnir of the state police Narcotics and Organized Crime Bureau.
The informant's concerns about Santiago were included in an investigator's report Kushnir authored Jan. 15. In the report, the informant is quoted as saying that Santiago was "friendly" with an associate of the Genovese crime family who operated illegal gambling machines throughout Newark.
Another informant expressed a similar concern to a second state police investigator, Detective Dennis Vecchiarelli, on Jan. 14. Vecchiarelli recorded this second contact in a report he wrote Jan. 15.
The Record has obtained copies of the initial reports written by Kushnir and Vecchiarelli, together with several others. The reports provide details of state police inquiries about Santiago in the days and weeks after McGreevey nominated him for the superintendent's job.
The state Attorney General's Office reviewed the reports prior to Santiago's confirmation as superintendent and found them to be "unsubstantiated."
Santiago did not respond to a request for an interview, but his lawyer, Michael Critchley, said late Tuesday that the allegations were untrue.
Critchley suggested that the investigators may have fabricated the informants' statements in an effort to prevent Santiago from becoming superintendent.
"This is a smear job," Critchley said. "This is an absolute smear job. Absolute smear job. You can quote me on that. This is nothing but a smear job, an attack job. It's fundamentally unfair. It's almost odious. No, it is odious."
Critchley said it was unfair to use statements from informants because they could be unreliable.
"When you are dealing with informants, unless you check them out nine times to Sunday you have to have some suspicion about them," Critchley said.
In his report, Kushnir characterized the informant who spoke to him as "fairly reliable" - although he acknowledged he was uncertain whether the information was true. Kushnir did not reveal whether the informant was a man or a woman, referring to the person as "he/she."
"For approximately two years, this informant has provided information which has proven accurate and reliable and resulted in the successful execution of several search warrants," Kushnir wrote. "This informant has a personal knowledge of and relationships with known members of organized crime in Essex County, and more specifically, in the city of Newark."
State police documents show that in February, one month before the state Senate confirmed Santiago as superintendent, the state police gave the reports on the informants' fears to First Assistant Attorney General Peter C. Harvey. At that time, state police investigators sought legal guidance on whether to investigate the allegations. The Attorney General's Office asked the state police to reveal the identities of their informants. The informants did not want the Attorney General's Office to know their names, and investigators were forced to drop the matter, state police documents show.
Harvey said the Attorney General's Office had examined the allegations.
"Those allegations were examined by us and we determined that they were unsubstantiated," Harvey said late Tuesday. "It wasn't as if it was ignored or not pursued. ... [The allegations] were not independently corroborated by anyone. They were unsubstantiated allegations from unnamed sources."
Harvey declined further comment, saying it was unethical to discuss confidential investigations.
The Attorney General's Office, which was overseeing a routine background investigation of Santiago, chose not to disclose the allegations to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee was considering Santiago's nomination.
"I was not informed of any of that," said state Sen. John J. Matheussen, R-Gloucester, a member of the committee. "I certainly think the Attorney General's Office had an ethical obligation and perhaps a legal one to provide that kind of information to the committee. Withholding that information is just as damaging as perpetrating a fraud on the committee."
Matheussen and other senators on the 10-member committee said Harvey and Attorney General David Samson should have taken steps to either verify or refute the information in the state police reports before allowing the nomination to go before the Senate committee. The committee sent Santiago's nomination to the full Senate for a final vote in early March.
"I have never heard of these documents," said Sen. Nia H. Gill, D-Essex, one of seven committee members who voted in favor of Santiago. "It would have been vital to my consideration of Santiago before the committee."
In his Jan. 15 report, Vecchiarelli said his informant "was very concerned about his/her identity as a State Police informant being compromised by Director Santiago's appointment as superintendent." Vecchiarelli described the informant as "fairly reliable" and said the information provided was "possibly true."
"For the past four years this informant has supplied me with reliable information on members of organized crime as well as police corruption in the City of Newark and surrounding communities," Vecchiarelli wrote. "The informant stated Director Santiago associated with known members of organized crime in the Newark/Essex county area. The informant also stated that Director Santiago owed large sums of money to these individuals."
Kushnir's informant alleged that Santiago was "friendly" with Peter "The Crumb" Caprio, a former member of the Bruno crime family who had become a government witness in a high-profile federal mob case. Caprio, who grew up in the Ironbound section of Newark, had confessed to the 1996 killing of Joseph Sodano, a North Jersey Bruno family figure.
Seeking to verify his informant's information, Kushnir called FBI Special Agent Kenneth Terracciano, who had interviewed Caprio in the past. Terracciano told Kushnir that he already had asked Caprio about Santiago, according to a Jan. 16 report by Kushnir. During a "debriefing" conducted by Terracciano, Caprio said he had "no relationship" with Santiago, although he had a "social relationship" with Santiago's stepfather that never involved any criminality, Kushnir's report said.
"I was then advised that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would not be able to provide any negative information about Director Santiago," Kushnir wrote.
On Tuesday night, Critchley focused on the fact that Caprio told investigators that he did not know Santiago. Critchley said this statement by Caprio - a statement that contradicts Kushnir's informant - is evidence that the informant was not reliable.
Santiago is now at the center of a firestorm over a Sept. 19 memo in which he ordered his subordinates to turn over all confidential state police files detailing investigations into him and his executive staff.
Santiago asked for the investigative files 10 days after three troopers notified the state that they plan to file suit, claiming they were targeted for retaliation by Santiago because they had investigated him and his top staff members. One of the troopers, Lt. James Campbell, was overseeing an investigation into allegations that a former aide to Santiago was involved in a protection racket in Newark. The allegations suggested the aide had provided protection to liquor stores and social clubs operating illegal gambling machines.
Last week, Samson ordered the state Office of Government Integrity to review Santiago's Sept. 19 memo and determine if it was improper of the superintendent to ask for confidential files on himself and his staff.
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's father was the first NJ State Police Superintendent
http://www.fieldtrip.com/nj/98822000.htm http://www.state.nj.us/lps/njsp/about/20s.html http://www.crimelibrary.com/lindbergh/lindcrime.htm http://www.njsp.org/about/badge.html http://www.charleslindbergh.com/kidnap/ns.asp http://www.capitalcentury.com/1928.html
Now, I sadly shake my head and turn away.
Back in the '60s it was said that MAFIA was short for Mayor Addonizio's Friends In Action.
(Nobody else does, either.)
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