Former FBI agent Joe Pistone, who infiltrated the Mafia for six years as Donnie Brasco, reveals how his undercover work led to more than 100 convictions - and resulted in the death of underworld figure Dominick `Sonny Black' Napolitano.
Joseph Dominick "Joe" Pistone (born September 17, 1939), alias Donnie Brasco, is a former FBI agent who worked undercover for six years infiltrating the Bonanno crime family and to a lesser extent the Colombo crime family, two of the Five Families of the Mafia in New York City. Pistone was an FBI agent for 27 years.
Pistone was a pioneer in deep long-term undercover work. The FBI's former director, J. Edgar Hoover, who died in 1972, did not want FBI agents to work undercover because of the danger of the agents becoming corrupted.[citation needed] But Pistone's work later helped convince the FBI that using undercover agents in lieu of relying exclusively on informants was a crucial tool in law enforcement.
