Timehost: We're very pleased to be joined tonight by Bill Bonanno, former consigliere of the Bonanno Family. He's just written a book about his life, and the life of his family, and his father Joe Bonanno. The book is called "Bound By Honor: A Mafioso's Story." Welcome, Mr. Bonanno.

Bill Bonanno: Thank you for having me here. This is my first time online. This is all Greek to me.

Timehost: Well, it's our first time talking to a former consigliere. Let's take the first question from online. Let's start at the beginning...

jakob1286 asks: How did you join the Mafia?

Bill Bonanno: It wasn't so much about my joining... there was no period of time today when I can say I wasn't yesterday and tomorrow I am. In my case it is more that I come from a tradition and a philosophy of life, and I was born into it. And as I grew older, I exhibited those qualities which exemplified our tradition.

Het_Nikik_1 asks: Did you feel you where blessed with your life or cursed?

Bill Bonanno: Sometimes the responsibility of living up to this tradition was a burden, but more times than not it has been a good life. I have very few regrets, and most of my regrets are based on hindsight.

merlotncaviar asks: Do you miss the excitement ?

Bill Bonanno: What excitement? Contrary to public perception, this lifestyle is more waiting and waiting for long periods of time for something to happen, and then short bursts of activity. I guess I haven't really answered your question: I can't say that I miss the excitement Those few times when it was exciting, most of the time were negative times in my life.

Timehost: Here's an issue you discuss at great length in your book...

Het_Nikik_1 asks: Who was truly involved in the Kennedy Assassination?

Bill Bonanno: This is going to be a long answer....

Bill Bonanno: I can only relate to you what has been related to me. And in order to do that, we have to go back and understand the situations that were happening at that period of time, the late Fifties and the early Sixties. When Kennedy became President, he was immediately faced with a 3-prong attack on his administration. Number 1 was the Diem situation in Southeast Asia, where he and his administration backed the Diem government and then in later years, as the story goes, they dumped Diem. Diem fell out of favor with Washington. Kennedy had sent Maxwell Taylor to Southeast Asia and later Cabot Lodge... so that was one thing. And then the second prong of the three-prong attack was the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban situation. And the third prong was his and Bobby's relentless attacks on the people in our world, and for the sake of clarity, the people that were involved in the Mafia. So at a given period of time in the early sixties he had the French against him, the Cubans against him, and the Sicilian Italians against him. Madame Nhu, who was the wife of the brother of President Nhu, and the acting First Lady of South Vietnam If you recall your history, she went off to Paris where she was enlisting the aid of the French OAS to support her brother-in-law. So you have a very complicated situation in the years 1960 and 1963. It came to my attention many years later in 1971 while I was a guest of our government at the federal institution in San Pedro, California, that there was more to the assassination than a lone gunman. One day while I was sitting in the yard, with a number of other inmates, Johnny Roselli, out of Chicago, was very upset, infuriated in fact, about the treatment that he was being given by his people in Chicago. One of this group had made a remark about Jack Ruby, and Johnny made the statement that "Jack was a lot more loyal than that (expletive) Sam." Whether or not it actually happened the way it was related to me, I don't know I do know this: That Johnny Roselli told me that he was the shooter in the sewer below the grassy knoll. And that there were others that were backups behind the wall of the grassy knoll. They were Frenchmen. I've been asked many times whether I believe him, and I irrevocably believe him, because I have known Johnny for a long time. I know the type of person he was, and there would not be any purpose of him saying it if it were not true. Because he knew the people that he was talking with that day in the Yard. It was not a long gunman. In reality, Lee Harvey Oswald was the fall guy.

sonnyj9 asks: What motivated you to let Gay Talese have your story?

Bill Bonanno: Gay Talese was a very insistent correspondent for The New York Times at the time. The New York Times, he told me, doesn't have reporters, they have correspondents. And he just didn't give up. He was very tenacious. He hounded me for about four or five months until I said OK, you can have the story, provided that we have an understanding: that you will get it a little bit at a time whenever I can. I couldn't very well tell him that at the time I was involved in a shooting war in New York.

Nightwalker16 asks: Mr. Bonanno, how close is the mafia life compared to how its depicted on TV?

Bill Bonanno: There is much misconception about what the Mafia is and is not. The world that I come from is made up of people who adhere to the principles of the "small M Mafia" or the adjective mafia. What has been portrayed in the movies has mainly been about the noun Capital M Mafia. The term Mafia is ambiguous in itself. In my book, which is called "A Mafioso's Story," I have a definition of what a mafioso is -- and it is very simple -- the definition is: one who makes himself respected. The capital M Mafia ... is the term that law enforcement and the media have invested years in portraying -- a particular lifestyle. That lifestyle is foreign to me. I do know what it means to be a mafioso. And someone who has the attributes of a mafioso may not belong to a certain organization, or any organization. The definition I give in the book is to make oneself respected, to be strong enough to avenge yourself for any insult to your person, or any extension of it, and to offer any such insult to your enemies. That was the definition that the anti-mafia commission of the Italian government used to describe what a mafioso is.

Timehost: That's one of the most interesting things about your book -- in describing the role of the Families, you look at them historically, going back hundreds of years, and present the Mafia as essentially a liberation movement in Sicily. You say that when it was transported to the U.S. it became essentially a way of helping Italian immigrants. That's certainly not the view that most people have of the Mafia.

Bill Bonanno: Part of our problem is that we have a tendency to judge old-time standards by modern situations I do not understand, nor do I recognize. I was asked today whether there is a Mafia in this country. I said no, at least not the Mafia I knew. Basically Sicily was an agrarian economy where people were dependent on each other. But when they tried to translate that society to this country, they found themselves in an urban setting. For a while, it worked. But the marketplace mentality of the American-born people in this world, the Lucky Luciano's, started to break down the values and the traditions that had been handed down literally for centuries. And the reason I say there is no Mafia today -- not as I knew it -- is that what happened to society in this country happened to us: we lost our family values. We lost that set of relationships and kinships that sustained us over the centuries.

Het_Nikik_1 asks: Did prison scare you at all?

Bill Bonanno: Certainly I was apprehensive the first time that I went to prison. But that left me very quickly when I found that inside the prison there were many people that I knew. As a result of that the way was paved. And I very quickly learned that the inmates run the prison. And because of that I didn't have any problems.

peaceloveandmore asks: Mr. Bonanno, How can you be an EX-mob boss? I thought there was no getting out.

Bill Bonanno: That's another one of those misconceptions that the media has promulgated, and the law enforcement has promulgated. There is no such thing as an Ex-anything. You always are what you are. The term Boss is a generic thing. If everybody they label a boss was a boss we'd have all bosses and no soldiers. The myth that you can only leave this lifestyle feet-first is nothing more than a myth. For every violent death, a la Anastasia, the attempt on Costello, there are hundreds of peaceful accords. And peaceful retirements. Most of the people I know who were the leaders for the longest period of time -- Steve Magaddino of Buffalo, the leader of the Buffalo family for more than 40 some years, he died in bed, in 1976. Joe Profaci, the leader of his family for some 40 years, died in bed. His successor only lasted a year, but he died of natural cause. My father Joseph Bonanno, who led his family for over 40 years is still living, and I fully expect him to die in bed also. I retired in '68.

Timehost: In your book you talk about your "oath" being irrevocable.

Bill Bonanno: It is. But it is irrevocable from YOUR point of view, from YOUR standpoint. I still feel the same way today as I did 40 some-odd years ago. But what does that have to do with -- are we saying that if you take an oath to follow this tradition, that you can't do anything else in life? That's one of the purposes of my book, to try to unbend the twisted story, the story that has been bent into so many shapes that we can no longer tell fact from fiction.

merlotncaviar asks: How do you feel about the way Gotti ran his family? Was he too public or was it good for organized crime?

Bill Bonanno: Let me say this about that... the rise and fall of John Gotti, no matter what kind of imagery is used represents almost perfectly why the Mafia no longer has any credibility or power today. In my opinion, Gotti is the epitome of everything that has gone wrong in our world. At least the public persona of John Gotti. I am sure that his private persona, the relationship with his wife and family, with his son and so on, is different, and for that I give him credit. But as a representative of our world, I cannot give him too much credit.

Timehost: Here's a follow-up to what you were talking about earlier...

School_Girl_18_98 asks: What then, causes the myth of violence going hand in hand with the mafia to continue. Why wouldn't more people come forward, such as yourself to set the record straight?

Bill Bonanno: Because that is the investment that law enforcement has -- in promulgating this myth it is to their advantage to keep this myth alive. Violence is a very, very small part of our world. The Mafia does not rely so much on violence as it does on relationships. Relationships that lead to accommodations.

cruzze90025 asks: Why did Joe write about the COMMISSION in his book. (MAN OF HONOR)

Bill Bonanno: This might be a good point to speak about another myth: the myth of Omerta. Omerta is the mythical code of silence. And everybody interprets the Code of Silence to mean whatever they want. I have been asked, aren't you breaking the code of omerta? My answer to that is that omerta is the admonition against being the downfall of someone else. The term means to act in a manly way. And when you are NOT the downfall of someone else, you are acting in a manly way. The admonition of omerta does not mean that one cannot speak about how he feels about given things. When my father wrote about the Commission in his book, this was not a revelation. The Commission had been written about many times before. My father was not revealing anything new. Where the problem came was that the esteemed (present) mayor of New York, who was then the U.S. Attorney, saw an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the best-known crime-fighter of our century, who was Thomas Dewey. And Rudy Giuliani wanted to become a crime-fighter himself. Prior to this period of time, Giuliani got the glory by going after my father. He tried to subpoena my father. My father said no way. And he went to jail for 17 months for contempt. The trial itself was a farce. Giuliani made headlines by putting my father in jail. The existence or non-existence of the Commission was really secondary. But after he put my father in jail he became known as a crime-fighter. Before this period of time he needed a photo ID when he showed up for work.

Cherub_123 asks: How is your relationship now with your father

Bill Bonanno: My father and I have been father and son for 66 years. However, above and beyond that we have been friends for 45 years.

Het_Nikik_1 asks: Did you ever order hits on people?

computer_nerd76 asks: Have you ever killed a man?

Bill Bonanno: The question is: have I ever killed anyone? or ordered someone else to do that? My answer is twofold: Number one, do you really want me to answer that question? Number two, I've been asked that question so many times that I've decided to answer it: In my next book.

Timehost: Here's a question that lots of people have been asking...Do you know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa?

Bill Bonanno: (Laughing) To the best of my knowledge, Jimmy Hoffa is running around someplace in the country as somebody's front fender. Seriously though, the information that I have come into possession of is that he was abducted from the restaurant in Detroit was given a quick-acting poison that is almost untraceable because it decomposes in the body immediately and was put into a compactor.

grinch3235 asks: Mr Bonanno, have you read the book "Double Cross" by Sam Giancana's cousin, and what did you think of it?

Bill Bonanno: Yes, I have read the book. The book was a third-party recitation of things that Sam apparently told his cousin and his nephew. And some of the incidents discussed in the book I have personal knowledge that they weren't quite that way. That being said, I don't mean to infer that the authors were writing falsehoods. That may very well have happened if that is what Sam told them. Because if you believe everything in that book, there was nobody else in this country that had anything to do with organized crime except Sam. He controlled everything. And there are a few thousand other people who would take exception to that.

Rainman_78248 asks: Mr Bonanno, what advice would you give to someone who is in a gang right now?

Bigballinwhiteboy asks: Hi, I am an 18 year old male, and many of my peers actually have dreams of becoming mafia, and it is because they see the movies and want to live the life. Is the life like the movies (Casino, Scarface), and is it possible for anyone to become mafia

Bill Bonanno: That's a tough question. First of all, the movies: the movies are dramatizations. Both of those movies were based on facts that were third or fourth-hand. And, as in many cases, something got lost in the translation. The only advice I could give anybody is the following: Any fool can make a decision. Decisions are made every day. But unless you are prepared to take responsibility for your decision, as well as the consequences that come with that decision, I would think twice about even thinking of being involved in any activity that you are not prepared to pay a price for. There is this conception out there that you are joining the Lion's Club, or the Elks Club. Without any thought given to what tomorrow will bring. And if you get tired of it you can turn around and walk away. It doesn't quite work that way.

IB_el_Fuego asks: How has R.I.C.O. helped to cripple organized crime?

Bill Bonanno: In my opinion, RICO and many of the other so-called organized crime statutes were a very small part of the crippling of organized crime. Organized crime has been in most parts defeated by ourselves. We opened the door, we gave the glare of publicity to our world. And we lost the values that kept us together. That's what crippled organized crime.

victoria_beheaded asks: What is your life like now?

Bill Bonanno: My life at the present time is peaceful. Hectic. Full of promise for the future. And pretty good.

Hoodoo_Guru247 asks: Did the Mafia ever go into drug dealing or did u stay out of that completely ?

Bill Bonanno: It's pretty well established that the Mafia was into drug dealing. I can only speak for myself and of course for my father, because it was from him that I had the admonitions against drug-dealing. I can irrevocably say, that neither my father nor I were ever involved in drug-dealing. That however is not to say that there were not people close to us who did. And that's pretty well-established fact.

busta_187_98 asks: Mr Bonanno, you are obviously very intelligent, otherwise you never would have become so powerful, but do you acknowledge that you did the wrong things not just in the eyes of the law but from a social viewpoint?

Bill Bonanno: No, I can't say that I did the wrong things, because if I said I did the wrong thing, then I wouldn't be true to myself. I have, as I've said before, very few regrets in life. I have a clear conscience, and that's where my strength comes from, from a clear conscience. I have never said that everyone should believe in the philosophy that I believe in. I have seen how law enforcement works. I have seen how government works. I have traced the origins of the accumulation of power of a small group of people from a small island in the Mediterranean and how they dispensed that power, and I don't have any guilt feelings.

Azz_NRR asks: What was it like knowing you had more power than most men will ever command?

Bill Bonanno: I've been taught that every possession is a burden, and the possession of power many, many times weighed heavily on me. Especially when you know you have the power of life and death over other individuals. But you're trained psychologically and physically to accept that responsibility. And you pray to your God, whoever that may be, that you can make the right decisions so that you can sleep at night.

digitalman5048 asks: Mr. Bonanno, do you think the Mafia has a role to play as we approach the year 2000?

Bill Bonanno: Before I can answer that question we have to understand each other as to definition: if you are talking about the definition of mafia that I am talking about, a definition that includes relationships and kinships and friendships, a mafia that requires a high standard of morals and mores, yes, I think society can benefit. If nothing else, the Mafia that I know teaches responsibility for one's actions. And I think that is probably what is missing in our society today. I am content with the life I've led, and I make no apologies for it. I fully accept that the traditions that I grew up with, and that flourished for a time, have gone underground. There to gather and reform in ways that may be impossible to imagine. But I do believe that the best values of my world loyalty within a group, honor, devotion to one another, responsibility for one's actions, whatever they may be, and determination to be independent and free, cannot be extinguished, because they are at the core of human nature itself.

Timehost: Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Bill Bonanno. Any other closing thoughts?

Bill Bonanno: In July of this year, on the Showtime Cable network, we will air a six-hour miniseries, starring Martin Landau Edward James Olmos Robert Loggia Philip Bosco Patty Lupone depicting the life of Joseph Bonanno Sr. Martin Landau plays him. Tony Nardi plays him from his 30s through his 60s and Bruce Ramsey plays him from 17 to 30. The epic story begins in 1904 and goes to the present time.

Timehost: Who plays you?

Bill Bonanno: A fellow by the name of Zachary Bennett plays me. I'm a very small part of the movie.

Timehost: Thanks again for joining us.

Bill Bonanno: You know, we are in the process of establishing our own website. It won't be up for about 30 days. it's called www.themafiasite.com

Timehost: What would you have said if someone told you ten years ago that you would be talking about books and websites about your life? If someone had even thought of this ten years ago, they might have been threatened with death?

Bill Bonanno: Yeah, maybe. But there aren't any secrets left in the world. No point in getting your back up. If I told you that this person killed that person on a certain day, that would be wrong. I have no right to do that. But what I'm talking about is almost pop culture. It's what I'm seeing here, talking to you online. When they came to me and suggested this website, I said come on, what are you talking about? But then I started looking at the Gambino site, then I looked at the TIME LIFE Picture Collection online, and I looked at your old pictures of the families, and the articles in LIFE and TIME, and beyond that, private pictures, our personal collection, our own artifacts. You have three pictures of my father taken in 1959. So we decided to go ahead with a website. So in essence, stay Tuned. Good night, and thank you. As a famous Italian said Goodnight Mrs. Kalabash, wherever you are.

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