Giovanni Falcone - Setback

Setback

Falcone's record of success and high profile led to resentment from some quarters, he was not given the job he coveted as chief prosecutor in Palermo. The new incumbent did not accept that the hierarchical Mafia structure revealed by the Maxi Trial actually existed, and he attempted to force Falcone to work on cases of wife beating and car theft. Falcone became so frustrated that he spoke of resigning. During 1988 Falcone collaborated with Rudolph Giuliani, at the time U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in operations against the Gambino and Inzerillo families. Rumours impugning his integrity deeply troubled Falcone during this period.

On June 20, 1989, a bomb was discovered in a beach house Falcone had rented in the town of Addaura. Although Falcone had been threatened before, this failed attempt bothered him extremely because it had all the signs of an inside job. At the time he was meeting Swiss prosecutors Carla Del Ponte and Claudio Lehman from Lugano who were helping to investigate the Mafia's financial holdings in Switzerland. Falcone believed that the assassination attempt not only involved the Mafia but some people in government as well. During the investigations into the money laundering networks of the Mafia it became clear that former Palermo police chief Bruno Contrada who had moved to the intelligence service SISDE had warned a suspect about his impending arrest so that he could escape in time.

Falcone received an effusive congratulatory phone call from Giulio Andreotti after the narrow escape. Falcone privately thought it odd that Andreotti, who he had never spoken to, would suddenly contact him, and he mused about the significance of the incident to a friend. Unknown to Falcone the efforts to kill him were suspended while the Maxi trial verdicts went through the appeals process that had often set convicted Mafia members free. Later investigations into the murders of two police officers Antonino Agostino and Emanuele Piazza, who worked for the secret service, revealed that they had secretly defused the bombs that had been placed by a Mafia commando aided by other secret service men. Agostino and his wife were killed on August 5, 1989, and Piazza on March 15, 1990.