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Fbi battles mob bosses Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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G-MAN WITH 'A' RECORD NEW FBI BIG HAS BATTLED N.Y.'S MOST NOTORIOUS THUGS
New York Daily News; New York; Feb 7, 1998; WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM;
Copyright Daily News, L.P. Feb 7, 1998
The day after the biggest cash robbery in U.S. history, Lew Schiliro got a phone call.
"The guy said, 'How'd you like to know who did it?' " Schiliro said, recalling the words that stunned him as a young FBI agent in 1978.
The caller was an informer. The robbery was the $5 million Lufthansa heist. And the main culprit was fingered as James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, a murderous Irish hood who 12 years later was catapulted to fame when Robert De Niro portrayed him in the film "GoodFellas."
The call and the informer helped launch a lengthy investigation of the robbery and a 22-year FBI career that last month earned Schiliro one of the bureau's top jobs: head of the 1,100-agent New York office.
Friends and colleagues say Schiliro rose through the ranks on the strength of his hard work, analytical precision and cautious determination.
Those qualities made him an unlikely adversary for the flamboyant Burke, a gangster so shrewd and savage that he killed off his accomplices before they could run him to ground.
Schiliro's reserve and low-key approach also set him apart from his colorful predecessor, James Kallstrom. A gregarious bear of a man, Kallstrom had compassion, a deep voice and grim resolve that became a symbol of the FBI during the investigation of the TWA Flight 800 explosion. Kallstrom also oversaw several high-profile FBI successes, including the prosecution of World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef.
But Schiliro's professionalism and track record have earned him a rare honor: the respect of street agents and prosecutors who call him approachable, direct and a good listener as well as that of top bureau officials, judges and U.S. attorneys.
"He won't be a media darling . . . but he is just so solid," said U.S. District Judge John Gleason, a former assistant U.S. attorney who has worked with Schiliro. "He has such good judgment, and I think being down to earth is so important in that job."
Gleason should know. He was the lead prosecutor on the team that put mobster John Gotti away for life, and Schiliro served as his expert witness.
Schiliro also worked on the Pizza Connection heroin case. The prosecutor was then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Freeh, his FBI academy classmate and friend who went on to become his boss as director of the FBI.
A third-generation Italian-American, Schiliro became a supervisor at age 30 and spent 10 years overseeing drug investigations, working cases from the trenches of Jackson Heights, Queens, and upper Manhattan.
"I know what it's like to chase a guy for 2 ounces of coke," he said. It's a background that, coupled with his experience in complex cases, makes him uniquely suited for his new job.
"I spent 22 years investigating criminal cases in New York City, and there are not too many people who have done that," he said recently in his new lower Manhattan office, which overlooks the city and the Hudson River.
But he remains a man of humility. He told the more than 1,000 people at Kallstrom's retirement party last week that when he stepped behind his fellow G-man's desk, "It reminded me so dearly of a child standing alone in the middle of Yankee Stadium."
Colleagues, however, have no doubt he is up to the task.
James Bucknam worked with Schiliro when Bucknam was chief of the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office narcotics section in 1991-92 and later when he served as senior adviser to Freeh in Washington.
"He's an extremely shrewd investigator who is not only street smart but also an intellectual," said Bucknam, now a managing director at Kroll Associates, an investigative firm.
"He's an attorney and possesses an attorney's mind, and can analyze issues and find subtle nuances in both cases and policies that other people don't see or fail to appreciate," he said.
Born in Howard Beach, Queens, the son of a plumber, Schiliro grew up on Long Island, where his mother, Jean, still lives. His father is dead. Schiliro has two brothers one a Suffolk County cop and the other a car dealership service manager and a sister who is a nurse.
Schiliro still lives on Long CR Island with his wife, Virginia, also a nurse, and is happy he turned down most of the Washington jobs that normally are required for FBI advancement. He has one daughter in law school, one daughter in college and a son playing second base for his high school team.
"I try to go to a lot of games," Schiliro said with the smile of a father whose heart is still on the ballfield. "Unless there is snow on the ground, we're out every weekend {playing}.
"This job becomes who you are, as opposed to what you do, and there is a down side to that. You can't go back and capture the times, the missed birthdays and Christmases."
Schiliro graduated from Hofstra University and earned a law degree at Cleveland State University. He joined the FBI in April 1975, and his first assignment was in New York.
He supervised the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force from 1982 to '88, when he was transferred to the Undercover Unit, Criminal Investigative Division, at FBI headquarters in Washington. He returned to New York 18 months later as the organized crime and drug programs coordinator.
Schiliro was promoted to assistant special agent in charge of the Counter Terrorism Branch in 1994, and in February 1995, he was made special agent in charge of the criminal division in New York, a position he held until he took his new post.
He said he plans to build on Kallstrom's successes and focus on several areas, including pushing for legislation to provide agents with better tools to monitor encrypted communications, which drug dealers, terrorists and other criminals are using with greater frequency.
After prosecutions that have weakened the mob's stranglehold on construction, garbage hauling and other industries, he also is considering having more agents focus on drugs and violent gangs areas where he said the bureau helped make an impact in bringing down crime.
"You do make a difference, but you do it in small increments," he said. "I don't know if most agents or cops get that sense, but the smalleCR r cases become more significant in those terms."
[Illustration]
Caption: MARK BONIFACIO LEW SCHILIRO has been involved in celebrated cases ranging from the Lufthansa robbery to the successful prosecution of John Gotti to the World Trade Center bombing. Now, he is replacing James Kallstrom as the head of the FBI's 1,100-agent New York office.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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