Protecting the Family

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

"It was expected we do the right thing." That was Martin Light's description of the simple code he followed during his 15 years as an attorney for the Mafia. And what exactly was the right thing? Counseling mobsters to perjure themselves, take the Fifth Amendment and destroy evidence; helping them to intimidate witnesses and jurors; paying off judges, prosecutors and police officials; and even fingering clients as suspected informants. "To do the right thing means to protect the family," explained Light. "It's a way of life."

When Light, 50, appeared before the President's Commission on Organized Crime in Washington last week, he became the first "lawyer gone bad," in the parlance of law-enforcement officials, to give public testimony to the Federal Government. Appearing under heavy security--as well as a grant of immunity from prosecution--the dapper former attorney, who is serving a 15-year sentence for heroin possession, fielded questions with a sometimes nonchalant candor during a two-hour session.

According to Light, he was one of 20 to 30 attorneys formally servicing the mob in New York City, and he claimed that other such lawyers operate in more than half a dozen major American cities. He contended that the Mafia has infiltrated "legitimate businesses" in New York, including a fuel-oil distributor and a school-bus company that has obtained a lucrative contract from the city's public schools.

Light told the commission that he began hobnobbing with mobsters at an early age. Growing up Jewish in a predominantly Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, Light hung around his grandfather's bathhouse, which was also frequented by members of the notorious Murder, Inc. Upon graduating from | Brooklyn Law School in 1962 and going to work as an assistant district attorney, he began to moonlight as legal counsel for some of his acquaintances from the neighborhood. When the D.A. ordered him to abandon his private practice in 1969, Light instead quit to work full time for the Cosa Nostra. He said he received 80% to 90% of his fees in cash--"the best way to get paid."

The Mafia lawyer worked closely with reputed Colombo Family Lieutenant Gregory Scarpa, tipping off the mobster about clients of his who he thought might be cooperating with federal authorities. The penalty for informing: execution. Said Light of Scarpa: "He could have dinner with you, then when it comes time for dessert, he could kill you."

Light also testified that he won an acquittal for Billy ("Wild Bill") Cutola, a Teamsters Union official who, he said, shot a suspected informant in the head. According to Light, the victim was stuffed into a 55-gal. drum, which Cutola then dumped into the East River. As Light tells it, the body's gases caused the drum to rise to the surface. "Next time, I'll know better," a jocular Cutola reportedly told Light after he was cleared of the murder charge. "I'll cut his stomach open."

Light's arrest for heroin trafficking occurred, he maintains, while he was delivering two grams of "junk" for a friend. At his 1984 trial, New York City prosecutors had contended that the dope was part of a much larger quantity that Light was dealing. Federal authorities declined to say what kind of deal Light may have cut with the Government in return for his story. When Deputy Commission Counsel Stephen Ryan asked Light, "Would (the Mafia) kill you for what you're doing today?" He replied soberly: "Without a doubt."

With reporting by Anne Constable/Washington