FBI agents Ed Guevara and Steve Carbone made their names working the 1978 Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy International Airport and the 1978-79 Boston College point-shaving scandal. Lewis Schiliro earned his stripes cornering Sicilian heroin traffickers in the 1980s Pizza Connection case and overseeing major counterterrorism investigations like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The Mafia Commission Trial of 1986 and the eventual conviction of John Gotti in 1992 are the outcomes of a generation of agents who helped propel the FBI away from J. Edgar Hoover’s Machiavellian tenure and toward a modern and sophisticated investigative agency that found its footing in organized crime and terrorism cases.
But the techniques in the FBI’s toolbox didn’t evolve without its growing pains.
Street agents like Mssrs. Carbone and Schiliro populated the bureau’s 50-plus field offices during a “special time” in the bureau’s 117-year history.
“Really from 1979 to 1987 was pretty much a heyday (for the Bureau). We hammered the mafia pretty good in New York,” head of the bureau’s Organized Crime section in the early 1980s, Sean M. McWeeney, told The New York Sun.
It was a time when agents had some degree of autonomy to pursue cases separate from the power-hungry bureaucracy emanating out of FBI’s headquarters at Washington.
“The bottom line is everybody at the FBI (worked) for the street agent who’s making cases,” Mr. Guevara, who retired from the FBI in 2001, told the Sun.
One such field office was the Brooklyn-Queens Metropolitan Resident Agency, or “The BQ,” as agents called it. Opened in 1978, the resident agency was staffed almost entirely by FBI agents who hailed from the Metro area, Mssrs. Schiliro and Carbone included.
Agents back then were “willing to go out and take a risk,” Mr. Schiliro told the Sun, sometimes with great success, sometimes not.
The story of “Gurney’s represented that big time.”
‘There’s Guys Coming In’
On a hot summer evening in late August 1979, Special Agent Dennis Buckley pulled his car off the Belt Parkway into a parking lot near the Jamaica Bay Riding Academy, where his mob informant was patiently waiting for him.
Mr. Buckley’s informant “Bob,” had a blockbuster of a tip to share. “He said, ‘This (is) what (I’m) hearing: there are guys coming in and they mentioned Gurney’s as the meeting place,’” Mr. Buckley explained in an interview with the Sun.
“Bob” was considered inside the bureau as a “TE,” or a “top echelon” informant. He was a made guy with the Genovese family who earned his money through bookmaking, loansharking, and horse betting.
“Bob” was also a close friend of the head of the Gambino crime family and the capo di tutti capi in La Cosa Nostra, Paul Castellano. The two men would regularly meet at a restaurant at Bay Ridge for coffee, where “Bob” would give money to Castellano as a tribute for “really nothing,” Mr. Buckley explained. Castellano, in turn, would speak candidly to “Bob.”
It was during their most recent meet-up when Castellano told “Bob” that “we’re having a big meeting, it’s coming up, and we’re going to go out to my friend Nick’s place out east,” according to Mr. Buckley.
“Nick” was Nick Monte, the grandiose Brooklyn restaurateur who had transformed Gurney’s and Montauk from beautiful hermitages to national hotspots.
“(My) informant knew very well that everybody knew Nick Monte,” Mr. Buckley said.
What the meeting was about, “Bob” wasn’t sure. But Castellano was going to be there, and chances were the bosses of the Genovese family, Frank “Funzi” Tierri, and of the Colombos, Carmine “the Snake” Persico, would be as well. Even the man who ruled organized crime in Tampa, Santos Trafficante Jr., would likely be attending. The meeting would probably happen after Labor Day weekend.
“When you deal with these guys, sometimes you don’t want to overreact,” Mr. Buckley said. But he knew just how incredible a tip this was. The meet-up at Gurney’s would be the most consequential gathering of the Mafia Commission since the infamous mob summit at Apalachin in Tioga County in 1957.
Back at The BQ, Mr. Buckley cross-checked the tip with two FBI agents in separate offices who had TEs of their own.
One informant, a hijacker and “a good earner” for the Genovese family, said that “a meeting is due and (Gurney’s) would be a good spot for them to have it.” The other informant, a high-level mobster at Newark, confirmed “that he heard there’s going to be a big meeting out at the end of Long Island,” Mr. Buckley recalled.
Gurney’s was beginning to look like a sure thing and an unavoidable, even redemptive, risk that was too good for the bureau not to take.
A Second Shot at Apalachin
Apalachin, “the greatest Cosa Nostra conclave in history,” as Peter Maas described it in his 1986 book “The Valachi Papers,” took place at the estate of powerful New York mobster, Joseph “Joe the Barber” Barbara. The meeting itself was called for by crime boss Vito Genovese, in part for him to be officially recognized as the new boss of the Luciano crime family.
Ultimately, the meeting was broken up — not by the FBI, but by U.S. Treasury agents and New York State Troopers, one of whom learned of the meeting while investigating a bounced check case. More than 60 mobsters were apprehended, including Carlo Gambino and Castellano.
Apalachin exposed longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s shorthanded approach to investigating organized crime. True, Hoover had launched the Top Hoodlum Intelligence Program months before Apalachin with the goal to “track the movements of every mob leader in the United States,” explained Hoover’s former aide, Cartha D. Deloach. But the program “did not amount to an awful lot,” said the former head of the Department of Justice’s organized crime division, William Hundley. He said working with the FBI on organized crime was like “pulling teeth.”
In a damning 1979 internal memo, agents said the bureau “systemically neglected” its organized crime resources, even in the aftermath of Apalachin.
From 1962 to 1977, just 175 agents were assigned to cover the five families of La Cosa Nostra. The bureau’s strategy attacking organized crime was half-baked at best, said some former agents.
“What we were doing in 1975 was we’d go out and make a gambling case or a loan sharking case … and they were relatively easy cases to make,” said Mr. Schiliro, who joined the bureau’s Colombo squad that year.
Looking at “statistical accomplishments in the short term,” however, was a Hooverian misstep. Arrests and convictions may look good on paper, but the net effect these cases were having on dismantling the crime families was nil.
Prosecuting the five families required a new approach, and one had been introduced in 1970. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act gave law enforcement an effective legal strategy to prosecute organized crime. This first required securing proof that a mafia family was not a legal entity, but rather a criminal enterprise. Afterward, prosecutors would need to demonstrate a pattern of racketeering activity — such as murder, loan sharking, and extortion — to prosecute.
“That required, in many cases, (listening to) conversations,” said Mr. Schiliro. Getting those conversations on the record required court-authorized wiretaps by way of a Title III order — a sometimes complicated process that would require attaining probable cause.
Special Agent in Charge of The BQ, Edwin J. Sharp, had worked the bureau’s first-ever Title III case in 1969 against father-son gambling duo, Martin and Jesse Sklaroff, who worked for a layoff gambler with ties to La Cosa Nostra. The FBI wiretapped four payphones at Miami International Airport that the Sklaroffs would use to place and take bets from people in cities like Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit.
An energetic man who spoke with a cheerful West Virginian twang, Mr. Sharp preached about the importance of informant development and wiretaps in working organized crime cases. Upon hearing of Mr. Buckley’s tip, he could barely contain himself.
“The excitement was indescribable,” Mr. Sharp, now 90, told the Sun. It may have sounded too good to be true, but with a meeting of that potential, “there was no choice” but to pursue it.
Apalachin was just a “mob round-up, but they didn’t have information. We would have information, and that would be fantastic,” said Mr. Sharp.
The Keeper of the Inn
As the site for the meet-up, Gurney’s made sense. The inn was situated along the dips and curves of Old Montauk Highway, hours away from New York City. Whereas Barbara’s Apalachin estate offered “peaceful country air for soothing frayed feelings,“ Gurney’s Inn had the untouched natural beauty of Montauk, the restorative power of the Atlantic Ocean, and, of course, “The Keeper of the Inn,” Nick Monte.
Born in 1916, Nicholas Montemarano (who later shortened his last name) was the fifth of seven brothers born to Angelo and Filomena Montemarano. Growing up in a two-bedroom apartment above the family grocery store and restaurant in Carroll Gardens, Monte had taken over the restaurant from his father by the time he was 16 and transformed it into Monte’s Venetian Room. The hotspot drew in big-named celebrities and mobsters alike, from Frank Sinatra to mafiosos Persico and Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo.
“All the guys from Third Avenue, the Profacis and the Columbos, hung out at Nick’s. That was a watering hole for them,” said the author of “Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia, Ground Zero,” and “The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia,” Frank DiMatteo. Mr. DiMatteo’s father, Rick DiMatteo, was an enforcer for the Gallo crime family.
Monte’s restaurant was considered neutral territory. Even “Crazy Joe” and his brothers, Larry and Albert, who launched a bloody revolt against Joe Profaci’s leadership, sparking the First Colombo War in the 1960s, respected the middle ground.
Only once in a while would they “get out of line,” said Paul Monte, Nick Monte’s nephew and the former CEO and General Manager of Gurney’s Inn. “Bullet holes in walls, heads in urinals, that kind of stuff.
Monte and his wife, Joyce, discovered Montauk in 1955 by way of a restaurant customer who had invited them up to his summer cottage. After sipping scotch and sodas and awaiting a meal that their host never prepared, they set off to Gurney’s Inn for lunch.
Monte was instantly smitten by the modest 20-room shorefront hotel and restaurant known for its fine dining and white-glove service. Gurney’s had romanticism and vast oceanic vistas. What it didn’t have was booze. The proprietor of the inn, Maude Gurney, a staunch Christian Scientist, forbade drink from being served on the premises.
Monte introduced himself to Gurney and gave her his card. “He said, ‘If you ever decide to sell the place, let me know so I can come in and put in a bar,’” Paul Monte recounted.
Three months later, Maude Gurney, who co-founded the inn in 1926 and had run it solo since her husband’s death in 1942, contacted Monte. He paid her $200,000 for the property ($2.3 million today when adjusted for inflation), and immediately set about reimagining the inn.
Having dropped millions to add more rooms, more amenities, and more personality to the place, the new Gurney’s Inn soon attracted both the famous and infamous. Former Presidents Richard Nixon and Dwight D. Eisenhower were guests, as were Cheryl Tiegs, Brooke Shields, Truman Capote, and Diana Ross.
The mob also stayed at Gurney’s. “Everybody from every family was over there,” Mr. DiMatteo told the Sun. “Nick was friendly with everybody, so he had everybody go there.”
That included Mr. DiMatteo and his uncle, Joseph Schipani, a capo in the Genovese family who “had a piece” of Gurney’s as a silent investor, according to Mr. DiMatteo’s 2020 book “Lord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert Anastasia.”
To the FBI, it made perfect sense that La Cosa Nostra would choose Monte’s hotel for a major conference. Montauk was like the “Switzerland of New York” as “it was on nobody’s real territory,” said one FBI agent.
The fact that Gurney’s Inn was owned by Monte “added credibility” to Bob’s tip, Mr. Buckley said.
“They’re going to be picking a location or a site where they could rely on the people who owned the place,” said former chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force for the Eastern District of New York, Edward A. McDonald.
Preparing the Scene
Before they could send agents to Gurney’s, Mr. Sharp and company had to secure a Title III court order. But the FBI didn’t know the date or time when the meeting would take place. The team did not know which room the wise guys would meet in — all specifics needed to get Title III approval.
Of course, a Title III could be granted in an “emergency situation” in which law enforcement would be allowed to wiretap and surveil “conspiratorial activities” before an order can be secured. However, emergency authorization was rarely used or granted.
The Gurney’s meeting was slated for sometime around September 13. The FBI would need to get a surveillance squad secured around Gurney’s. They would need agents on the ground, posing as tourists, to keep eyes on guests as they checked into Gurney’s.
When they knew where the meeting would take place, they would need a black bag specialist to break in and plant recording devices. They would also need a staffer from the Department of Justice on hand to ensure they had all the necessary facts to satisfy the Title III order or risk losing any or all recorded evidence generated by the surveillance.
Mr. Sharp quickly set the Title III affidavit into motion with the Department of Justice. The DOJ assigned Mr. McDonald, an inexhaustible attorney who had been leading the investigation into the $6 million Lufthansa heist, to assist on site.
Mr. Sharp chose Mr. Carbone to oversee the Gurney’s operation. He and Mr. McDonald had spent months working side by side on the Lufthansa case. Mr. Sharp visited Mr. Carbone’s office to deliver the orders personally.
“The boss comes in and said, ‘You’re going to take it and you’re going to bring out (whoever) you need,’” Mr. Carbone recalled Mr. Sharp telling him.
Mr. Carbone was instructed to assemble a team of 40 agents, both male and female, from The BQ office. They would all stay at Gurney’s, and if rooms ran out, the nearby Panoramic View Hotel would be used. Mr. Sharp emphasized the need to act quickly.
“The FBI doesn’t solve everything,” said Mr. Carbone. “But if we didn’t investigate (Gurney’s), it would have changed the complexion of the bureau.”
Mr. Carbone wasted no time. He summoned Bob Shortle, a reliable undercover agent from Vermont, and told him to head out to Gurney’s and to book as many rooms as he could — several agents from New York and Washington would eventually join him there.
He gave Mr. Shortle a credit card and a fake ID and advised him to go to his apartment to pack a bag.
“You’re going to be out there for a little bit,” Mr. Carbone said.
The Bureau Checks In
On September 12, 1979, Mr. Shortle pulled into the driveway at Gurney’s Inn in a white Mercedes 450 SL convertible. Looking like a jet-setter who had stepped straight out of a cigarette advertisement, Mr. Shortle, with his manicured mustache and stylish hair, carried a single bag as he approached the front desk.
“I’ll need as many rooms as you can give me,” he said, explaining that he was a real estate developer in town to look over “land possibilities” for new projects. Several of his colleagues were joining him at the inn over the next 24 hours. The woman behind the desk said she only had six rooms to give him. He gave her his ID and credit card and told her to put the rooms under his name, “Ed Harris.”
“Mr. Harris” then took a slow stroll around the grounds of Gurney’s Inn. It was active, despite it being a weekday in the off-season, and a good crowd of people was there attending a Linear Accelerator Conference hosted by the Brookhaven National Laboratory. As he approached the beach, the sun was still out, and it felt like summer, despite the breeze from the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. Shortle wondered if this was really the kind of place La Cosa Nostra would choose for a historic commission meeting. These guys typically gathered at someone’s home where they could control access and set up perimeters. While Gurney’s was isolated and picturesque, it was also porous.
“I’m looking at the place and I’m (thinking), ‘Well, I guess they could meet on the beach,’” Mr. Shortle said.
As “Ed Harris” settled into his room, the agents at The BQ mobilized. Mr. Carbone called his agents into the office one by one, instructing each as he had Mr. Shortle: go home, pack a bag, head to Montauk, and await further instructions. Forty agents were now on their way to Montauk, including a few from FBI headquarters at Washington.
Mr. Carbone arrived by helicopter, accompanied by a supervisor in the Bureau’s Special Operations Division, James Kallstrom, to join the crew in Montauk
Through the night into the early morning hours of September 13, the bureau’s elaborate plan took shape. Since their arrival, agents had seen no sign of the mob at the resort. This was good news for H. Edward Tickel, the bureau’s foremost break-in artist. He now had enough time to ply his trade.
Mr. Tickel’s specialty was impressioning. He would insert a key blank into a lock and apply enough pressure to get the impressions from the pins inside. After several attempts, he would have enough information from the lock to craft a master key that could get through all the gates inside that lock.
“The man could look at a lock, tell you what it was, and how it was going to work,” former special agent in Mr. Schiliro’s squad, Lisa Grob, who frequently worked with Mr. Tickel, told the Sun. She too was among those sent to Montauk.
At 3:00 a.m., Mr. Tickel moved silently through Gurney’s halls while Ms. Grob kept watch. Working efficiently, Tickel inserted key blanks, applied pressure, and filed each gate precisely. Within minutes, he had crafted working keys for every important lock, including those to the inn’s conference rooms.
Outside, members of the surveillance squad employed a “staggered surveillance” approach, positioning themselves along Route 27 on the way into town. A photographer in a van discreetly parked near Gurney’s entrance. A “flight squad” of ex-military agents in single-engine Cessna 182s provided aerial surveillance, ready to track mob leaders Trafficante and Castellano as they made their way east.
“Being a part of this was (like) the Super Bowl for the BQMRA,” said Mr. Schiliro, who with Mr. Buckley observed the operation take shape.
Everything was in place. Mr. Buckley was feeling equal parts thrilled and nervous. The entire operation hinged on his informant’s tip.
“I had my fingers crossed, praying it would work out,” said Mr. Buckley.
But as the days passed, there was no sign of any bosses, underbosses, or consiglieres.
One evening, Mr. Buckley joined his colleagues for dinner at the hotel restaurant (it was Mr. Carbone who instructed them to “act like they belonged there”), maintaining their cover while watching for any sign of their targets. It was the first time Mr. Buckley had left his room since arriving. The phone in his room had been ringing nonstop, fielding calls from other agents, the Department of Justice, and FBI higher-ups in New York.
His phone rang again shortly after he returned from the restaurant. It was Bob. He said he had been trying to reach Mr. Buckley all day but the phone was always busy.
“Any updates?” Mr. Buckley asked. Bob had none to offer.
There was something in Bob’s tone that gnawed at Mr. Buckley. Why would Bob try to reach him all day only to have nothing to report?
“There was nothing new, but he knew enough to call me,” said Mr. Buckley.
It was 4:00 a.m. and Mr. Buckley couldn’t sleep. A whole army of FBI agents was camped out at Montauk, just itching to make history. He needed answers. He needed to see Bob in person.
Mr. Buckley got into his car and raced back to Brooklyn. He met up with Bob at their usual spot, but the TE had no updates to give him. To Bob’s knowledge, the meeting was likely still on.
He asked Bob to see Castellano again and try to learn anything new, and do so without raising suspicion. He then drove three hours back to Montauk, fueled entirely on adrenaline and stress.
On the surface, staying at a luxury resort would seem like a cushy assignment for the bureau, but the whole team was on “pins and needles for 24 hours a day,” recalls former special agent, John Kapp, who was on Mr. Carbone’s squad. All the agents could really do was sit, wait, and keep their heads on swivels.
Mr. McDonald camped out at the bureau’s command post inside the Seagull Cottage at the Panoramic Hotel. He used the extra time to complete a reply brief to Louis Werner, who just appealed his conviction for his role in the Lufthansa heist. Lisa Grob swam laps in Gurney’s Inn’s saltwater pool, while supervisory agent Margot Dennedy, dressed in a bikini, laid out on the beach, keeping eyes on those walking around the inn.
Few agents there recalled seeing Monte on the premises, save for one agent spotting him in his office, making a phone call.
When one agent was assigned to install an electronic bug in a meeting room, Mr. Carbone, out of curiosity and boredom, joined him. Outside, Mr. Kapp and a female agent acted as a married couple, keeping a lookout.
As Mr. Carbone watched the specialist look for the right place to put the bug, a cleaning lady started making her way toward the meeting room.
Mr. Kapp quickly intercepted her and made small talk. But after just a few minutes, the maid excused herself and approached the door of the room.
Mr. Carbone heard someone put a key into the door. The bug had yet to be installed. He and the other agent were going to get caught. The two darted to the back of the room and hid underneath the table.
“I was pretty scared,” Mr. Carbone remembered.
The cleaning lady entered the room, replaced a garbage bag inside a small bin and left. She did not spot the two agents cowering in the back or any of the equipment they had left out. When the coast was clear, the two finished installing the bug and escaped undetected.
In the days that followed, Mr. Buckley’s informant had no news to give him. Mr. Trafficante had yet to show up. Neither did any of the other marquee mobsters expected to arrive.
“Every day it was, ‘Well, they might come, they might come,’ but we all thought they were going to show,” said Ms. Grob. Not once did the agents doubt the meeting would happen.
“(No one said) ‘Okay, this is bulls**t, let’s get out of here,’” because there was always the possibility,” said Mr. Kapp.
Each day ended as it had the day prior, with Mr. Carbone telling the team, “Maybe tomorrow they’ll show up.”
But no one did, and on the afternoon of September 18, Mr. Sharp pulled the plug. His agents checked out of Gurney’s and headed back to New York City.
What Happened?
Nearly 46 years after the fact Mssrs. Buckley, Sharp, and Schiliro continue to ask themselves why the meeting didn’t occur.
“It always worried me that somebody (at Gurney’s) got suspicious of seeing too many strangers out there,” said Mr. Sharp. “I always felt that was a problem, but there no way of ever determining that.”
Vincent LoDestro, a longtime employee at Brookhaven National Laboratory, attended the 1979 Linear Accelerator Conference and told the Sun he had no idea the bureau was there at Gurney’s.
“If (the FBI) wanted to blend in with the surroundings, they certainly did a good job,” Mr. LoDestro added.
So why did the mob never show up? Did somebody, perhaps Nick Monte, tip off Castellano et al of the Bureau’s presence? Did Bob get his information wrong? Or was “Bob” feeding the FBI a lie they wanted to hear?
“It’s only my belief that informants are going to say what they want to say (and) tell you what you want to hear,” said Mr. DiMatteo, adding “Nobody’s stupid, they’re not going to have no big meetings (at Gurney’s).”
However, the mob eventually did have their sit-downs at Gurney’s in the years that followed, “and the FBI certainly were in and out and always very inconspicuous,” said Paul Monte.
The Gambino boss who succeeded Castellano after orchestrating his assassination, John Gotti, regularly stayed at the hotel’s Skipper’s Cottage. In 1990, Gotti hosted a La Cosa Nostra meeting with members of the Gambinos and the Lucheses.
Also in attendance was Joe Schipani by then a former capo in the Genovese and still an original silent investor in Gurney’s Inn. In 2013, the Monte family sold Gurney’s to investor George Filopoulos. It has since undergone extensive renovations.
Monte continued serving as “The Keeper of the Inn” until the mid-2000s. He died of heart failure in 2007. In 2013, the Monte family sold Gurney’s to investor George Filopoulos. It has since undergone extensive renovations.
“It looks pretty, but it doesn’t have the soul that it had before,” said Paul Monte.
No, the Gurney’s Inn meeting never happened, but its ambition and scope paved the way for the bureau’s eventual success against La Cosa Nostra.
“I think the cases that follow demonstrated that clearly,” said Mr. Schiliro.
Within a few years, the bureau and the Department of Justice would begin to use RICO, informants, and the Bail Reform Act of 1984 to their fullest advantages, as evidenced by landmark racketeering cases like the Pizza Connection and the Mafia Commission Trial.
“RICO was a bitch,” said Mr. DiMatteo. “The surveillance became really, really good, and guys now don’t want to do 100 years no more.”
Weeks after the disappointment of Gurney’s, Mr. Buckley got wind that the higher-ups in Washington D.C. wanted to speak with him, Mr. Sharp, and possibly even “Bob” for an “after-action” meeting. Leadership intended to grill the men on everything from “Bob’s” track record as a dependable informant to the strength of the original tip itself, to understand how the Bureau justified assigning 40 agents to pose as tourists at Montauk.
Mr. Buckley flat-out refused. He needed to protect “Bob’s” anonymity to the fullest extent, and that included leadership in D.C.
“That was setting a precedent that was really not acceptable, particularly to the informant and to the agent himself,” said Mr. Sharp.
Mr. Sharp eventually went down to Washington D.C. by himself for an in-person meeting. He returned to the BQ with his and Mr. Buckley’s job still intact.
Today, the bureau faces unprecedented scrutiny from both President Donald Trump and the FBI’s new leadership team of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, the Director and Deputy Director, respectively. With rumors of incumbent Bureau leadership planning on slashing staff and gutting the bureau’s intelligence capabilities, among other measures, veterans like Mr. Sharp fear that an emasculated bureau will have disastrous consequences for both national security and the caliber of future agents.
“There’s no question that some of the top echelon people at headquarters were doing the wrong thing,” said Mr. Sharp. “But,” he added, any drastic changes made to the bureau will only “compound the problem.”
Instead, leadership should support, not attack, the men and women agents in the field.
While Mr. Buckley said the disappointment of Gurney’s felt like “striking out with the bases loaded,” both he and the BQ discovered, to borrow from Babe Ruth, that the strikeout brought them closer to the next home run.
“Gurney’s was like the initial baptism into a new era of investigation into the mob,” said Mr. Buckley.
Mr. Sharp agreed. “I would call it a stimulant that really got things going. Had that meeting occurred, it would have been one of the most important (La Cosa Nostra) meetings ever.”