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American Morning

Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano Facing Possible 20-Year Prison Sentence for Running Drug Ring

Aired March 26, 2002 - 09:43   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Remember Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, the infamous mob turncoat? Well, testimony by the admitted mobster and murderer helped strip the teflon off the so-called "Teflon Don" John Gotti, and sent him to jail for life. In exchange Gravano got a free pass and a new life in the witness protection plan.

Now he is facing a possible 20-year prison sentence for running a cross-country drug ring dealing in ecstasy. Now, Gravano has already pleaded guilty in the in the case, and he is expected to testify this morning at a pre-sentencing hearing in Brooklyn. And yesterday, a former associate-turned-government witness actually pulled a Gravano, portraying Sammy "The Bull" as a menacing drug lord who wanted to build his own Mob empire in Arizona.

Reporter Al Guart covers organized crime for "The New York Post." He joins us now.

Good to see you, welcome.

AL GUART, "THE NEW YORK POST": Good morning.

ZAHN: So what is the best that Sammy "The Bull" can hope for legally here?

GUART: He's hoping to get a 12-year prison term on the federal charge, that will put out of prison when he's 68 years old. I guess he figures he'll have some life left to go and do whatever he pleases, I suppose.

ZAHN: So what is it that he is going to try to argue? That he wasn't aware guns were going to be used in the operation, that he wasn't running the operation and it ran itself? Is that what he basically is going to today?

GUART: He will say, if he gets to takes stand today, even though there 14 guns seized, just about every major gun, Smith a Wesson, Mausbergs (ph), Glocks, very heavy artillery is what he had, he's going to says he couldn't foresee, reasonably foresee, those guns being used in the drug operation.

ZAHN: Now is anybody going to take that seriously? Are they going to laugh outloud when he says that? GUART: The problem with Sammy is he's a very good witness. He's an accomplished witness, and he knows what he wants to accomplish. He's going to go in there and do best to convince this judge that you know the guns were there, but we really didn't carry them or we didn't have them loaded, we didn't think they would be used. He will try to work around that as best he can.

ZAHN: But it seems to me the government prosecutors here are up against a slippery slope, because they can't so denigrate him -- I mean, he was the guy who helped lock up John Gotti -- so undermine credibility to make him look like good who could never tell the truth.

GUART: Yes, they have to insist that he told the truth in the past, but he's lying now. That's the line they have to draw. Everything he said about Gotti and Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, the Genovese family, all of that was true. However, now he's lying, only to save his own skin.

ZAHN: How successful was his drug operation?

GUART: Well, the government, DEA and the Arizona state attorney general estimated 500,000 a week was being pulled in...

ZAHN: Wow.

GUART: ... selling his ecstasy drug to club kids, you know, in Arizona and other parts of the country.

ZAHN: And this started off presumably when he was in the witness protection in the construction business. He was apparently pretending to be building pools.

GUART: Yes, he had marathon construction, building pools, but about six months after he was off probation, he began engaging in financing this drug operation with some young guys that his son Gerard knew.

ZAHN: Have you had an opportunity to talk with any of the folks that worked closely with him? Are they just blown away by the arrogance of this?

GUART: Well, there are people in the government that are very angry about the fact he blew his chance, that they gave him a good deal, five years for 19 murders, and then he went out and just thumbed nose at all that and started over again in Arizona with criminal enterprise. There's people very upset about that in the government. They're also very nervous about him. Sammy could easily spark some kind of major investigation by saying something -- telling some tale out of school about the time he was working for the government. Maybe there's some stories that he's got in his back pocket he could pull out that would get someone in trouble.

ZAHN: Is it telling a tale out of school or, you know, seriously making something up to mess up the works here?

GUART: Who knows. There's so much secrecy between the witness protection program about his cooperation and where he went. People didn't know he went to Arizona, obviously, until later on, when he opened a restaurant called Uncle Sal's and began to boast about who he was.

So there is so much secrecy, we really don't know what happened after he cooperated, whether he did make up stories to help convict people, whether there were some kind of antics with FBI agents that we don't know about. There's a lot of stuff that Sammy may know that could be damaging.

ZAHN: But the minimum jail time he faces, prison time, is 12 years?

GUART: Twelve years in federal, maximum 20 years.

ZAHN: So he's an old man, no matter how you cut it, by the time you get out of prison?

GUART: Well, 68 or 76 years old. There's probably a difference.

ZAHN: Absolutely. There is. Almost like two generations of living.

Al Guart, thanks for dropping by. Appreciate your insights.

Thank you.

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