The FBI's Deal With The Devil

The FBI takes another big hit on its credibility with Peter Lance's new book, "Deal With The Devil," which reveals the truth about the FBI's criminal relationship with mob informant Gregory Scarpa, Sr., who Lance says was allowed to murder at least 26 people while working as a paid informant for the FBI. Scarpa was nicknamed "The Grim Reaper" and "The Killing Machine" the Daily Mail reports on Lance's new book. He signed his letters "KM" and stopped counting the number of people he had killed after it reach 50. The most bloody period of his career happened between 1980 and 1992 when he was paid millions as a paid informant by the FBI.

According to Lance's new book, Scarpa is revealed as the inspiration for "scenarios and language used by Mario Puzo in his Godfather trilogy. Famed FBI informant Joe Valachi, who testified before Congress about the mafia's inner workings, was actually under Scarpa's control according to Lance. The revelations in his new book are from previously sealed records he obtained under freedom of information requests. Lance found that Scarpa wasn't just supplying intelligence. He was "acting with the apparent consent of top FBI officials to commit crimes and induce other members of the Mafia to break the law." Lance doesn't believe the FBI's Faustian bargain with Scarpa is defensible. He notes that Lance spent just 30 days in jail for attempting to bribe to police officers during a 42-year violent crime spree.

In a particular shocking revelation, Lance reveals how the FBI used Scarpa to perform rendition on a Klansman he kidnapped and tortured to crack the 1964 unsolved murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi during the civil rights movement, portrayed quite differently in the movie, "Mississippi Burning." According to Lance, Scarpa first put a gun to the Klansman's head that he had kidnapped as FBI agents watched. When the Klansman lied to Scarpa, he then put the gun's barrel in his mouth. As he continued to lie, Scarpa took out a straight razer, unzipped the Klansman's pants and threatened to emasculate him. When the witness finally cracked and revealed how the civil rights workers were killed and where they could be found, Scarpa returned to New York with an envelope of cash an inch thick that he used to take his mistress on a vacation to Miami.

Scarpa died from HIV/AIDS, which he contracted from a blood transfusion. He sued the hospital where he contracted the disease and recovered $300,000. Near the end of his life, he pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, but he died in a medical center for federal prisoners in Minnesota before he began serving his prison sentence.