Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [113]
According to a retired Major Case Squad detective who worked hijacking cases, “There’s no doubt that Kaplan was working [for the FBI] as an informant.” Another retired organized-crime police supervisor agreed that the FBI “was using Kaplan as an informant. If they say otherwise, they’re lying.” And the FBI agent identified by three sources as Kaplan’s handler confirmed his role: “He worked as a C.I. not just for me but also for an agent in New York.” A week later, however, the FBI agent changed his story and denied that he had ever used Kaplan as an informant.
Nevertheless, Kaplan’s alleged lack of candor raises disturbing questions for the prosecution about his credentials as a witness. “His [Kaplan’s] failure to disclose his status as a C.I. to his current interrogators is a clear indication of his desire to keep something secret,” says an indignant Hayes. “The question is what. The crux of this case will be to answer that question.” The defense attorney adds, “If he lied to the government in order to keep secret criminal activity to his profit or to whomever is holding his money, then his current testimony is worthless.”
No less significant, Kaplan’s previously undisclosed history of cooperation with the government focuses attention on another lingering mystery: Why was the initial investigation in 1994 into the two detectives’ crimes—the most stunning allegations ever made in the history of the NYPD—shut down? Why were such incendiary charges not pursued for a decade?
The answer routinely dished out by police and federal agents is that there were no witnesses: Casso had proved unreliable, and Kaplan was a hard case from the old school, a man who would never betray anyone. The law-enforcement party line on Kaplan was succinctly articulated in March by a source quoted in a Daily News report: “The tough Jew who could never be accepted as a member of the Mafia held to his own principles and honor.”
However, according to what two retired New York police officials and an active federal agent have told Vanity Fair, Kaplan had a history of compromising his “principles and honor” in return for government deals. Did either the FBI or the police, agencies with direct knowledge of Kaplan’s role as a government informant, truly pressure him to testify against Eppolito and Caracappa?
“I can’t believe that he was offered a deal in 1998 and refused it,” says Robert DeBellis, who as the former head of the FBI cargo-theft unit in West Paterson, New Jersey, knew Kaplan well. “If it was either [Kaplan] or someone else going to prison for twenty-seven years, he wouldn’t have hesitated for a second.”
One of the principal lawyers who defended Kaplan in his marijuana-trafficking case agrees that there was never a concerted effort to get his client’s cooperation. “To my knowledge,” he says, “there was never a formal deal on the table for Kaplan to roll over on the cops. It never got that far. The U.S. attorney said that they would like to sit down with him and talk. Kaplan said he wasn’t interested and that was the end of it.” Through his lawyers, Kaplan declined to comment.
But why did the police and FBI not actively attempt to get his testimony? Why did they, in effect, allow the case to die?
One theory being whispered in law-enforcement circles is that these agencies wanted the case to disappear. Casso, according to sources familiar with his debriefing sessions, had not merely incriminated the two city detectives but also made allegations about a corrupt FBI agent. And, police officials concede, Eppolito and Caracappa must have had “rabbis” in the department, officials who in the 1980s continued to give them promotions despite the flurry of suspicions. There were, some say, many reasons for powerful people to want the past to remain firmly past.
I WANT TO BURY MY SON,” Betty Hydell has said, according to a report by Mob authority Jerry Capeci.