Joseph D. Pistone

Joseph Dominick Joe Pistone, alias Donnie Brasco, (born September 17, 1939), is a former FBI agent who worked undercover for six years infiltrating the Bonanno crime family and to a lesser extent the Colombo crime family, two of the Five Families of the Mafia in New York City. Pistone was an FBI agent for 27 years.Pistone was a pioneer in deep long-term undercover work. The FBIs former director, J. Edgar Hoover, who died in 1972, did not want FBI agents to work undercover because of the danger of the agents becoming corrupted. But Pistones work later helped convince the FBI that using undercover agents in lieu of relying exclusively on informants was a crucial tool in law enforcement.

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