The withheld file of Gregory Scarpa, a mobster who worked as an informant for the FBI and had ties to the Kennedy assassination suspect Carlos Marcello, the “Godfather” of New Orleans, has been requested in the past. A Congressional investigation led by G. Robert Blakey, now a law professor at Notre Dame, had also indicated that the FBI was less than forthcoming with information about both Marcello and Scarpa. Today, Blakey lauds the efforts of Ms. Clemente, questioning why the FBI documents used in his investigation in the 1970s were so heavily redacted and expressing frustration with the FBI’s secrecy.

For several years, Angela Clemente worked on a case tackling corruption and informants for the Brooklyn D.A., which required her to conduct an in depth investigation of Scarpa’s relationship with a former FBI agent accused of murder. When the case fell apart, Clemente reviewed her research on Scarpa, and became suspicious when she recalled the difficulty of obtaining information on him for her former trial. Her curiousity about the FBI’s hesitance to divulge his file ultimately drove her to pursue the Scarpa-Marcello-Kennedy link, and to file her lawsuit this week.

Source: The New York Times