(music)
MALE: 24, possible overdose on (Bleep) Street,
at 125th and 128th. -Okay.
ZAKARIYA: Fire Dispatch, can you add unit 122 that run on 24's.
Here we are in little sleepy Toledo.
There's been times where I've put in 15 opiate overdoses
in a 24 hour period.
It's very, very frustrating.
A lot of the deaths that we have are young,
uh, you know, it's, it's tragic. Right, go do your thing.
It's an ongoing, never ending, losing battle.
(police siren)
(dramatic music)
MEDIC: Open your eyes dude.
What, what drug did you take?
ZAKARIYA: What we have uh, seemed like an accidental overdose.
We had somebody who was addicted to opiates in the past.
He admitted taking Fentanyl twice today, down at the park.
What we've seen here on the street is Fentanyl
which is a way stronger than heroin has ever been.
I cannot believe we had four overdoses
before 11 o'clock and, we'll get there.
DISPATCH: Agent can you see...
ZAKARIYA: Alright dispatch, can you put 122 on that run with medic 18? Last one.
MALE: Oh god. It's possible overdose.
(police siren)
FEMALE: 18-18.
ZAKARIYA: That's a code 18.
It's a, It's a, dead, dead on scene.
MALE: Shake this square world and blast off for kicks-ville.
RICHARD NIXON: America's public enemy number one is drug abuse.
MALE: Heroin destroys everything.
MALE: Prescribing pain pills created huge numbers of addicts.
GROUP OF PEOPLE: People die! (Inaudible)
MALE: Opium is cash.
It's like you're growing bills on the bush.
Crime and drug abuse go hand in hand.
It's like peanut butter and jelly.
KAMALA HARRIS: There's now an understanding
that the war on drugs was an abject failure.
MALE: You have to stop and ask yourself; how did we get here?
FISHERMEN: (Foreign dialogue)
FRANK: Mattanza is a Sicilian custom.
A whole bunch of fishermen get together
and put out 100 yard net and kill 1,000 tunas.
The water turns red and that's La Mattanza.
But it has a double meaning.
1978, it's no longer tuna that was being slaughtered,
it was Sicilian people.
My name is Frank Fiordilino and I was born into a mafia family
in 1970 in Sicily.
The Sicilian started, as early as the fifties,
to transport heroin and in the sixties got a little bit larger
until it just blew up in the seventies and eighties.
Gaetano Badalamenti and they would call him Don Tano.
He's one of the most powerful mob bosses in Sicily.
Gaetano Badalamenti became very rich, very fast.
He got into everything, from livestock to politics
to extortion to construction.
He had a lot to do with the airport in Palermo
and it's called Borsellino Falcone Airport but,
with all due respect, it should be called Gaetano Badalamenti
because he did build it.
And he starts smuggling drugs.
NARRATOR: Eventually, on an American street you are talking
about more than a half million dollars a pound.
RALPH: Gaetano Badalamenti was believed to be responsible
for 80 percent of the heroin coming into America,
which yielded huge profits
and that triggered a lot of jealousy among his fellow Mafia bosses.
RALPH: Salvatore 'Toto' Riina was the boss of the Corleonesi family,
which was the most vicious of the Mafia clans in Sicily
and he was called 'The Beast' (laughs) for a reason.
FRANK: 1978 'Toto' Riina wanted everything.
He wanted the drugs from Palermo.
He wanted the rackets and the political power from Badalamenti
and he starts eliminating the old guard and it becomes a blood bath.
This war broke every rule possible.
It was kids being murdered.
No more them just killing each other.
Now it's, they're killing everybody.
RALPH: It's a terrible time for Badalamenti.
Bodies are turning up all over the place.
FRANK: Once his friends started getting picked up and killed
he had to get out.
RALPH: He's forced into exile for self-protection and he flees to Brazil.
FRANK: Anything that he made illegally were now
property of Toto Riina and the Corleonesi.
RALPH: In Brazil, Gaetano Badalamenti faces
the most important crisis of his life.
He's now alone.
He's lost his connections in Italy.
He's really hard pressed for money.
How is he gonna find new sources of heroin to continue his trafficking?
How is he gonna hang onto his empire?
This is a real moment of truth for him.
PRESIDENT CARTER: Massive Soviet military forces have invaded
the small sovereign nation of Afghanistan.
Heavily armed troops have crossed the border
and are now attempting to conquer the fiercely
independent Muslim people of that country.
(multiple shots)
MIRWAIS: We had only one way and that was to fight.
REPORTER: President Carter called the Russian invasion of Afghanistan
the greatest threat to peace since World War Two.
MIRWAIS: My name is Mirwais Farahi.
I used to be the freedom fighter mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1980s.
I was 13, very young.
Mujahid is a person who fight for the freedom of his country.
People from all different backgrounds.
Farmers, business people, shopkeepers,
fighting with anything they put their hands on.
MALE: (Foreign dialogue)
MIRWAIS: To defeat Soviet Union.
I remember when they bombed Kabul.
I lost 18 member of my family, and it's tough.
We, we get killed; our country's destroyed.
Farmers couldn't really grow crops.
But it was easy to grow poppy.
Cultivation start increasing rapidly.
MALE: This is what it's all about,
the bulb found inside the opium poppy.
Slit the bulb and opium oozes out.
Refine the opium and you have heroin.
DOUG: I'm Doug Wankel.
I was the DEA's man in Afghanistan.
In 1978, when I arrived, Afghanistan was largely viewed as a producer
of hashish and opium.
It wasn't that big of a threat to the United States.
It was produced for internal consumption and regional consumption.
In the summer of 1980, we saw things drastically change.
Heroin production in the border areas of Afghanistan had grown,
almost beyond belief growth.
So, it was quite concerning, quite alarming.
DOUG: But with the Russians taking over,
we had no real access to operate in Afghanistan,
to take action against the major traffickers involved,
try to get them arrested.
RALPH: When the war broke out in Afghanistan
it was very good for Badalamenti.
It was a great chance for him to rebuild his heroin empire.
He lucked out.
MALE: Ten kilos of opium can be turned into one kilo of heroin.
All that's needed is water, a Bunsen burner, a press and some chemicals.
GREG: We knew that there was heroin production that was
increasing but there was nothing we could possibly do about it.
My name's Gregory D Lee.
I'm a 20-year retiree of the Drug Enforcement Administration
as a supervisory special agent.
It was very easy for heroin traffickers to transport
from the source country of Afghanistan
to Pakistan, which is right next door.
REPORTER: Smugglers find many ways of hiding their illegal cargo.
In this case it was hollowed out stones.
GREG: They would take it down to Karachi
and they would put it in commercial shipments,
cover it up with rice or wheat or whatever the export happened to be.
Heroin traffickers had free reign to do whatever they wanted to do.
Either Don Tano himself, or somebody within the Badalamenti organization,
made it a point to go to a place like Karachi or Islamabad or Peshawar
and completed a deal, establishing a steady supply of Afghan heroin
that he could smuggle eventually to the United States.
When that took place, nobody knows.
But the fact is, the deal was done.
FRANK: Just because Badalamenti didn't do no more business in Sicily
didn't mean he didn't have powerful friends in other places.
He knows who's in the drug game in the United States. So, that was easy.
Once you know the players, you know the game.
RALPH: He had relatives and connections all over the world.
In Germany, in Argentina.
FRANK: Brazil has an Italian community.
He connects with them and he creates his pipeline.
From Afghanistan to the United States
and Badalamenti is directing this.
RALPH: And he built this multi-billion-dollar heroin empire
based on his ability to organize
he was absolutely brilliant at it.
When you think there's one man masterminding this it's extraordinary.
FRANK: I mean, we're Italians, we built (Bleep) Rome.
RALPH: Don Tano Badalamenti started to send Sicilian Mafia operatives
into the U. S. to set up pizza parlors all across America.
In Illinois, New Jersey, all over the Eastern Seaboard,
all over the heartland.
Heroin was smuggled in tomato cans, in olive oil cans and cheese boxes.
It was so innovative.
FRANK: It's eventually called "The Pizza Connection,"
because pizzerias all over the United States are being used
as a pickup spot to pick up your drugs.
I mean what better place to have a cover.
You're Italian, you own a pizza shop.
It's perfect.
RALPH: They actually did make some good pizza
but, but the real purpose of this was to further the drug business.
FRANK: Out of being kicked out and being exiled,
Badalamenti becomes the biggest middleman
in the world in the heroin game at that time.
It was kinda like he was saying to "Toto Riina," (Bleep) you,
I'm gonna do whatever I want to do
and I'm gonna take your business and do it somewhere else.
MALE: The most active street business in New York is in the Lower East Side.
Customers come here from all around the Metropolitan area.
FEMALE: An influx of heroin is feeding a new heroin epidemic.
RALPH: DEA looked at it and said this is coming from Afghanistan.
That's a sudden new problem, they didn't know how to cope with that.
GERALDO: How do you get the money to do that to yourself?
HEROIN ADDICT: Steal it.
RALPH: It unleashed a huge crime wave that devastated America.
RALPH: Cities were going bankrupt dealing with the problems.
It was a terrible time.
REPORTER: More than half a million Americans are hooked.
RALPH: The country was in a panic.
The DEA were asking themselves, how do we stop this?
How do we plug this pipeline?
RICHARD: So, my name is Richard Fiano.
I spent 20 years in DEA, assigned to the New York Office, Miami Office.
I wind up getting a job in Pakistan.
JOHN: The war in Afghanistan has had one deadly consequence.
Its neighbor Pakistan has become the world's biggest center for heroin.
In towns like Landi Kotal, it's openly on sale in vast quantities.
RICHARD: Landi Kotal is on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It's a tribal area run by warlords
and a very dangerous place for any informants.
We knew that Landi Kotal was a smuggling hot spot
and you can pretty much buy anything you want there.
It's like Dodge City.
You could walk into any bazaar and buy dope.
Haji Ayub Afridi.
His name came up in several investigations.
He had a lot of influence and he had a lot of wealth.
There aren't that many ways that you can come to that kind of wealth
in a place like Landi Kotal by selling onions and tomatoes.
GREG: Afridi built this huge square kilometer compound
that can only be described as unbelievable.
25 foot walls.
Was pretty well furnished with the best you can get in Pakistan.
He's got 30,000 armed guards.
He had anti-aircraft weaponry at the corners of his compound.
He had a football field size rose garden.
The breeze would bring the scent of the roses to him
while he drank his tea in the afternoon.
I mean that's the kinda guy you're dealing with here.
You end up with the biggest house in all of southwest Asia,
'cause what else you gonna spend your money on
if you're a successful drug trafficker?
MEN: (Shouts)
PRESIDENT REAGAN: During the past 18 months,
the mujahideen fighting inside the country
have improved their weapons, tactics and coordination.
The support that the United States has been providing
the resistance will be strengthened
so that it can continue to fight effectively for freedom.
REPORTER: Have you bought many guns for Afghanistan?
MUJAHIDEEN: Yes. Yes, many guns.
REPORTER: Where's the money come from?
MUJAHIDEEN: This uh, come America.
REPORTER: From America? MUJAHIDEEN: Yes.
RICHARD: Afridi was a great asset in moving equipment, AK47s,
I mean a lot of weaponry for the United States in and out of Afghanistan.
NARRATOR: So long as Afridi is an asset for the CIA
in the war against the Soviets, he was essentially untouchable.
GREG: So, we have to change direction and try something different.
RICHARD: In order to stem the flow of the heroin,
we have to target the criminal groups
that are distributing it in the United States.
FEMALE: Fentanyl poisoning deaths doubled in 30 states between 2019 and 2021,
in just two years.
(music)
(multiple shots)
PRESIDENT REAGAN: Today, the power of organized crime reaches
into every segment of our society.
It holds a virtual monopoly on the heroin trade.
The time has come to cripple the power of the mob in America.
MALE: (Foreign dialogue) FEMALE: (Foreign dialogue)
CARMINE: We formed surveillance units conducting wiretaps.
This went on for many, many, many months.
We were trying to take down an organization, not just a bunch of individuals.
My name is Carmine F. Russo
and I was a special agent with the FBI for 24 years.
Tie straight?
The key figure in this investigation.
This article referred to an individual, who had been arrested in Germany
and, lo and behold, his last name was Badalamenti.
Could it be that the individual that they're talking about
and they're dealing with is Gaetano Badalamenti?
We thought this guy had disappeared from the face of the earth it seemed.
About a week or so later it happened again.
Another member of the Badalamenti family was killed in Argentina.
At this point, I said, guys, Gaetano Badalamenti's involved in this.
He became the target.
TONY: Gaetano Badalamenti had been in hiding somewhere in the world.
It was thought to be in South America.
But we don't know where he's at.
My name's Tony.
I was with DEA 26 years and I'm still in the business,
so that's why I choose not to reveal my face during this interview.
I was assigned to the DEA-FBI task force
because I was able to speak Sicilian.
I was asked if I wanted to go on a temporary assignment to monitor a wiretap.
The wire focused on Pietro Alfano's pizza restaurant in Rockford, Illinois.
Pietro's wife was a family member of Gaetano Badalamenti.
I was assigned to follow Pietro Alfano to see
if he could lead us to Badalamenti
and he used this payphone like daily.
So, a wiretap was initiated on the restaurant
and on the payphone that were next to the restaurant.
(phone ring tone)
We'd been waiting for several months on this wire.
MALE: (Foreign dialogue)
TONY: Pietro is on the payphone talking to Zio, his uncle.
This is good, we have movement.
We believe we have Gaetano Badalamenti on the other end.
The adrenaline is flowing.
MALE: (Foreign dialogue)
TONY: And the uncle orders him to come to meet him.
Drop everything you're doing and come meet me. So, Alfano says, okay, he will.
MALE: (Foreign dialogue)
TONY: And that was the end of that conversation.
But nobody mentions what city he's in.
So, we're there wondering how do we find that out, what city is he going to?
Well he goes back into his restaurant
he makes a call to an airline
and that's when we knew that this uncle was in Madrid, Spain.
We still weren't 100 percent sure that it was Gaetano Badalamenti.
FBI supervisor comes in.
He goes hey, kid, you got a valid passport?
You're gonna get on a plane tomorrow and go follow Alfano to Madrid.
I said yes, sir, I will do that.
At O'Hare Airport, we have Alfano seated at the gate.
He's wearing a suit, thin build and gets on board.
The FBI agent was on one part of the plane
and I was in a different part of the plane.
That way we had him under our view at all times during the flight.
They follow Alfano off the plane.
Follow him to a residence in Madrid.
They stake out the place all day.
Gaetano Badalamenti, he's the one they're waiting for.
RALPH: The Spanish police now have created an army of surveillance people
and they covered the neighborhood.
They wait through the night.
No sign of Don Tano Badalamenti.
But suddenly, Alfano comes out with an older man
with sunken eyes, mournful looking.
Spanish police surround them.
There's no escape.
They're immediately arrested.
But it was a signal moment in law enforcement history.
MALE: Hit it! Hit it! Hit it!
Go!
CARMINE: A decision was made that once Badalamenti was arrested,
the rest of the individuals we identified in this conspiracy
would also be arrested.
REPORTER: In Manhattan Federal Court today,
the Pizza Connection drug trial got underway.
Gaetano Badalamenti, reputed Sicilian mob boss,
is charged with running a 1.6-billion-dollar heroin ring,
along with 20 other defendants.
FRANK: The trial had a big spotlight on it.
It was one of the biggest at the time and it took a long time.
It had big, big names here in the United States
and of course, Badalamenti himself.
TONY: This really puts the nail in the coffin against the heroin trade
being conducted by the Mafia.
GREG: I got a phone call from Haji Ayub Afridi
and he says that he's considering self-surrendering
to the United States.
I went to my boss and he had a laugh.
He said there's no way in the world this guy's gonna surrender.
All of a sudden, things changed in Pakistan politically,
and Afridi thought seriously that he was gonna be kidnapped,
tortured, put in a dungeon somewhere, beaten every day,
that type of thing and I suggested to Afridi that I meet him in Dubai.
And we left the next day and went to his hotel room to meet him.
Here I am now, U. S. citizen, unarmed.
The only people I have with me are my partner, who's also unarmed
and we're about to meet one of the biggest heroin traffickers in the world.
We were holding our breath.
I opened the door and there he was.
Haji Ayub Afridi.
He paid his own way (laughs) to get to New York.
GREG: Afridi was sentenced to five years in a federal penitentiary
and fined $100,000.
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