The .22 Caliber Killings: Inside the Mafia’s Infiltration of Two FBI Field Offices

 During the post War period to 1968, the FBI and a few local police department Intelligence Units made liberal use of extrajudicial hidden microphones and wiretaps. In 1968, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. This statute authorized the first legal use of audio surveillance by law enforcement. The FBI created a large list of confidential informants. Many of them were street-level thugs and a few high-ranking mobsters. Since they did not have extensive electronic surveillance, they needed these men for probable cause to obtain the new legal wiretaps. Of these valuable informants, fifteen made-men were placed on the extremely confidential Top Echelon Informant list.

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In 1971, a young lady named Irene Kuczynski was a typist at the FBI’s Newark field office. A New Jersey Mob associate named Peter Szwandrak learned about this employment when he worked at Western Electric with her husband George. Peter told George Kuczynski a New Jersey Mob boss named John “Johnny D” DiGilio would pay for any files his wife could get and copy. George Kucznskui was already a spouse abuser and when his wife refused, he beat her several times until she agreed to get some files. DiGilio gave George $100.00 per delivery of any files his wife copied and brought home. DiGilio was extorting money from shipping companies and conducted a loan sharking business. He learned from the FBI documents that two members of his crew, loan shark and gambler Vincent Capone, and Frank Chin, an electronics expert who moonlighted doing wiretaps and sweeping for government microphones, were talking to the Bureau.   The FBI caught the Kuczynski’s and they agreed to testify. In July of 1975, the government charged Peter Szwandrak and Harry Lupo with the theft of FBI documents. They could not make a case on DiGilio. After this acquittal, unknown persons shot and killed Vincent Capone while his Cadillac was stopped at a traffic light. Someone murdered Frank Chin in the basement parking lot of his Manhattan apartment. In an interesting turn of events, the FBI lab results revealed that both men were killed by the same 22‐caliber pistol.

FBI goes into high alert

Once they discovered the theft of documents in the New Jersey field office was linked to the murder of witnesses, the FBI went on high alert. During the middle 1970s, they had noticed informants were being killed at every level. The newspapers reported on a rash of .22 cal. murders during this time and the FBI knew these were mostly informants. The FBI knew this entire leak of informant data did not come from the single theft at the New Jersey Field office. They theorized that the mob had paid persons to infiltrate the FBI throughout the United States.

Cleveland has a Mole

Cleveland mobster Anthony “Tony Lib” Liberatore had a car dealership and he learned that one of his employees named Jeffrey Rabinowitz was engaged to a young woman named Geraldine “Gerri” Linhart and that she was a clerk in the Cleveland office of the FBI. Gerri Linhart was getting a divorce. She did not earn much working for the Bureau and she was trying to sell a house she had received in the settlement. She had a hard time getting this house sold Liberatore had someone contact her and they promised to make her financial troubles disappear. She was advised that she only need to do some favors in return. She started selling files to Liberatore and his capo James “Blackie” Licavoli. Among those files was a complete list of FBI informants.  An example was the name Danny Greene who was in a battle with the Italian mafia over control of a labor union. He had been informing on the Mafia for years. In an interesting turn of events, the Cleveland Teasmster official Jackie presser was a Top Echelon Informant but he had demanded his n...