By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com I still remember walking down Connecticut Avenue in Washington, headed to the subway, when I ran into a friend who told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. About 20 minutes later, when I got off the subway downtown at the Farragut North stop, I bumped into…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The pirate biz may have provided a good life for two Somalian men. Now it’s simply providing life — in prison that is. Ali Abdi Mohamed, 30, and Burhan Abdirahman Yusuf, 31, were both sentenced Monday in federal court in Norfolk, Va. to life in prison for their roles in the…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Being the first is always worth noting. And that’s what Charles L. Gittens was — the first black Secret Service agent. He became an agent in 1956 and retired in 1979, the Associated Press reported. AP reported reported that Gittens died on July 27 in Maryland. He was 82. According to…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The mystery surrounding the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X may remain just that — a mystery. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has declined to reinvestigate the assassination. It said the statute of limitations had expired on any federal laws that might apply. “Although the Justice Department recognizes…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com You’ve got to figure most New York mobsters in their 80s have a rap sheet as long as the lunch line at the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue in Manhattan. Then there’s Nicholas Rizzo, 84, who was featured in a story on the website Gang Land News written by mob expert…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Some fed mobster file lost in a New York cab nearly 20 years ago– with an estimated pre-sale worth of $10,000 to $15,000 — are going up for auction at Bonhams New York, the Associated Press reports. The U.S. government file in a three-ring binder — stamped “Mafia” and “United States…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Certainly this comes as no surprise. A Congressional report released Monday concludes that American military-style weapons are arming Mexico’s violent drug organizations at an alarming rate and policy makers are not adequately responding. “Congress has been virtually moribund while powerful Mexican drug trafficking organizations continue to gain unfettered access to military-style…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The headline on the website Gang Land News says it all: “Red Hot NY Lawyer Tacopina Gets Big Chill From Wiseguys.” The headline was in reference to hotshot lawyer Joseph Tacopina, who was once the go-to guy for a lot of mobsters. But no more — apparently not since he became a…
