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Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Seamus McElearney with Barbara Finkelstein, "Flipping Capo: How the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos" (Chicago Review Press, 2025)
Description: Séamus McElearney's early days on an FBI organized crime squad were full of grunt work.
For months he was mired in administrative tasks, including the transcription of secret recordings of the DeCavalcante and Bonanno crime families. Eighteen months later, McElearney assisted in his squad's arrest of thirty-nine Mafia suspects; he led the team arresting Anthony Capo, a DeCavalcante soldier linked to stock fraud and conspiracy to commit murder.
Barely a week after Capo's arrest, McElearney accomplished what no other law enforcement agent had ever done in the hundred years of the DeCavalcante crime family's e...