An advantage of the Nagra was that you could record a conversation anywhere without backup agents. The advantages of the transmitter were its smaller size for concealment purposes, and the fact that when you were using it, there were monitoring agents nearby getting direct communications from the transmitter. With a transmitter, if a situation went bad and the undercover agent was in immediate danger, the other agents could be on the scene in moments. With a Nagra you could get in trouble and nobody would know.

But whereas you could record anywhere with a Nagra, in the city the transmitter had a broadcast reach of maybe two blocks. Steel structures could interfere with transmission, as could atmospheric conditions or passing vehicles. The surveillance team could lose you or get out of range. One danger was that it was possible for a T-4 transmission to be picked up and broadcast back over a television set. You could be sitting in a room chatting with a couple of wiseguys when suddenly the TV is broadcasting your conversation back at you. Everybody in the room knows that somebody is wearing a wire.

A disadvantage to any recording or transmitting device was that you risked your life using it. To be caught wearing a wire was usually a death sentence. Also, they didn’t always work. It looks easy in the movies. Just tape the device to your body, go in, and record the incriminating conversation. In reality the devices, while they are supposed to be at or near state-of-the-art in technology, are not infallible. There is always a compromise in efficiency when you try to make things small.

We undercover agents were not always given the equipment with the ultimate in advanced secret technology—stuff that spies may have. Eventually we testify in court, and we have to reveal the details of the electronics equipment we used in the investigation. Spies don’t go to court, so what they use won’t be revealed. Electronic stuff that the government wants to keep secret will not be given to undercover agents to use in making cases that go to court.

All these devices have delicate recording capabilities. That means that they pick up all sound. A device hidden on your body will pick up your own belches, the rustling of your clothing, and everything else in a room or nearby-conversations, shuffling of feet and chairs, radios and TVs, air-conditioners, street noise. Because of their paranoia that there are bugs planted everywhere, mob guys, whether in hotel rooms or cars or wherever, always turn on the TV or radio to cover the conversation.

Then, if everything else is just right, you still can’t insist that people talk about what you want them to talk about when you want them to talk about it. Our rules governing recording and transmissions were that once you’ve turned a device on, you leave it on for an entire conversation, and that conversation-recorded over the telephone or on the scene or by other agents monitoring your transmissions-is turned in as evidence. It doesn’t matter whether the conversation turns out to be irrelevant or whether it contains irrelevant sections; the whole thing is provided to the courts. While only relevant parts of conversations may be presented as testimony, the entire conversations are available to the defense attorneys so that they can’t claim we were being unfairly selective—trying to distort conversations-in what we recorded on the scene.

You turn on the recorder or transmitter prior to arriving at the scene. It may be hours before the conversation gets around to what you want to hear. Tapes run out. Batteries run down.

You have almost no control over conditions. You can’t test on the scene for sound levels. You can’t arrange people as you would like to for recording. You can’t ask them to raise their voices. You can’t control extraneous sounds that muddy the reception. You might go through hours of conversation laying the groundwork for the conversation you want. Finally he’s telling you everything you want to know. Then when they play the tapes at the Bureau, you got only half the conversation or maybe nothing—you don’t know that until it’s over. You can’t reconstruct that conversation. You can’t go back to the badguy and say, “You remember that conversation we had yesterday? Let’s talk about that again, and this time let’s not walk by that same building because there’s too much steel in it.... And let’s not walk too fast because the car that’s recording this is getting out of range.” Or,

“Let’s go over it again because last time the batteries were bad or the spindles were worn or the tape was dragging.”

That kind of frustration was to me more of a burden, more pressure than all the other undercover work.

I didn’t like carrying any device. It was difficult to hide anything. I was in solid with these guys, and there was always the traditional hugging and kissing of cheeks. There was horseplay, wrestling around. I was with these guys day and night. With Lefty it was twenty-four hours a day. I stayed in hotel rooms with him, changed clothes in the rooms, stripped to swimming trunks to go sit around the pool.

When I did use a recorder or transmitter, I never taped one to my body. The only time I did that was way back in 1975, at the beginning of the heavy-equipment theft operation. I carried the Nagra or T-4 loose, usually in my jacket pocket. With the Nagra I preferred not to risk running the microphone up under my clothes, so usually I wrapped the cord around the machine and stuck the whole thing in my pocket. When I wasn’t going to be wearing a jacket, I would put the Nagra in my cowboy boot. Then I would have to run the microphone cord up under my clothes and tape the mike to my chest.

I never wanted to keep the devices around. There was always a chance somebody would bust into your apartment or car. So when I wanted to use one, I made arrangements to meet the case agent somewhere for a pickup, and afterward for a drop.

The obvious overall advantage to wearing a wire is that you may get a crucial conversation that makes a case. That’s what makes it worth the risk. It was up to me whether I wanted to wear a wire or not in any situation. Altogether, beginning with Project Coldwater, I probably wore a wire a dozen times.

Sonny was pushing for an introduction to Trafficante. He sent Lefty down to Holiday on a mission to try to set up an introduction through intermediaries. We thought Lefty might talk about important people and procedures. It was too hot for a jacket. I put a Nagra in my cowboy boot.

He had told me that we were going to fly to Miami to meet the son-in-law of Meyer Lansky, the notorious mob mastermind of money and gambling businesses, who supposedly was a friend of Trafficante’s.

At breakfast I say, “I’m still not clear why we’re going down there.”

“Because I wanna see this guy,” Lefty says. “He’s in Miami Beach. He’s gonna introduce me to that guy there who’s going to introduce me to the main guy over here.”

Lefty was complaining as usual about Rossi not giving him enough money. Rossi had booked his round-trip flight from New York but had not offered to pay for his trip from Holiday to Miami, or for expenses he might incur.

“Just sit him down and explain to him what’s going on,” I say.

“That’s your job to tell him. This thing here is his idea.”

“I know it’s his idea, but he hasn’t made any fucking money yet, either.”

“I don’t need this aggravation. Just tell him we’re going to see Meyer Lansky’s son-in-law. Just tell him he’s got to give me the money.”

Lefty had sent Rossi over to the club to look for his Tampa-New York return-flight ticket. He said he had lost it somewhere. But he hadn’t lost it. He confided to me that he wanted to test Rossi’s reaction.

When Sonny had been down to see the club earlier, he had noticed that Rossi’s car had Pennsylvania tags and told Lefty he was suspicious about that. Lefty asked me, and I explained that it was a rented car, so the tags are whatever the car has on it when you pick it up.