Senators Don’t Kill is a weekly true crime newsletter from Tom Folsom.
I’m the New York Times bestselling author of The Mad Ones, about the iconic Brooklyn gangster Crazy Joe Gallo — turned into a folk hero by Bob Dylan in his 11-minute ballad Joey, gunned down in front of Umberto’s Clam House as depicted in The Irishman.
I co-authored Mr. Untouchable with Harlem heroin kingpin Leroy “Nicky” Barnes — targeted by President Carter as Public Enemy #1, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the film American Gangster. It required my disappearing for a month into Witness Protection to spend time with the man (Nicky, not yet Cuba), an experience I’ll eventually get into here.
I wrote a column on the Mafia in The New York Times Magazine and have contributed to publications such as Vice and T-Magazine. My biography on Dennis Hopper (an outlaw in his own right) was a national bestseller. This summer I was featured in the American Godfathers documentary miniseries on the History Channel, produced by Michael Imperioli.
Welcome to Senators Don’t Kill
The title is my take on the classic exchange in The Godfather when Michael Corelone returns to America from Sicily and justifies his decision to work for the family to his estranged girlfriend Kay.
Michael: My father is no different than any other powerful man. Any man who’s responsible for other people, like a senator or president.
Kay: Do you know how naive you sound? Senators and presidents don't have men killed.
Michael: Who's being naive, Kay?
With a modern lens, we’ll dive into the rich past of the American underworld in its golden age - the era depicted in The Godfather trilogy and Goodfellas - which, hardly coincidence, coincides with the heyday of paranoid spy thrillers involving dirty dealings of the CIA. Shining a light onto the shadowy nexus where gangsterdom and criminality meets espionage, we’ll have plenty on the French Connection, the fabulous clothing line that… Sorry, the real French Connection.
Named after the 1971 film starring Gene Hackman, the international heroin pipeline offers a treasure trove of secret dealings in which the US government made a Faustian bargain that hooked America on dope.
Alongside bizarre Cold War plots that put Ian Fleming’s imagination to shame, we’ll revisit New York City in the bad old days when the Mafia was truly as big as US Steel. Given the interplay between movies and the world we’ll explore (The Godfather had major impact on how Mafia types saw themselves), special emphasis will be given to the big screen.
We’ll keep it loose, but keep it fun.
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