Throughout the investigation, Traficant had steadfastly maintained his innocence, and the valley was bracing for a second epic trial. “Here’s what I’m saying now,” he insisted on C-SPAN, “and I’m saying this to the Justice Department… If you are to indict me, indict me in June so I can be tried over the August recess. I don’t want to miss any votes.”
Not long after, I travelled to Youngstown, hoping to learn more about the case against the Congressman and the Mafia’s hold on the region. Though it was the middle of the day, the downtown area was eerily empty. Rows of stores were boarded up, and the ornate façades of buildings were crumbling. Finally, I saw a light in a clothing store, where an old man was folding Italian suits. When I went in and asked him about the Congressman, he said, “Ain’t no one gonna get rid of Traficant. Traficant’s too sharp.” He recalled fondly the “henchmen,” including Strollo, who bought hand-tailored clothes from him. “They didn’t wear red or pink suits like they’re coming out with now,” he said. When I pressed him about the local corruption, he shrugged. “Who cares? If you’re working and making a living and nobody is bothering you, why are you going to butt in?”
That night at the restaurant in my hotel, several Youngstown natives who were in their seventies and eighties were sitting around a table arguing about the Congressman. “Traficant produces,” one of the men said. “That’s what counts.”
“Damn right!” another said.
A frail man with white hair said, “When I was eight years old I delivered newspapers downtown, and I would always go by this speakeasy on Sunday afternoon. Well, one day the owner says, ‘I want you to meet someone.’ So I went over and it was Al Capone.” He paused, then repeated, “Al Capone.”
Another man at the table, who had remained silent, suddenly said, “You see this? This is typical Youngstown. Here’s an educated man, an attorney, and Traficant is a god of his, and he’s still raving about meeting Al Capone.”
Later, Mark Shutes, an anthropologist at Youngstown State University who had studied the region, told me, “We have socialized ourselves and our offspring that this is the way the world is… There is no sense in this community in which gangsters are people who have imposed their will on our community. Their values are our values.”
During the latest Democratic primary for Congress, Traficant faced two opponents who railed against his alleged Mob ties and noted that he would soon be indicted. Still, Traficant won the primary with more votes than his two main competitors combined. Traficant seemed invulnerable; some congressional Republicans had even begun to defend him, apparently hoping he’d follow through on his threat to switch parties. “Jimmy Traficant is not being done right by,” Representative Steve LaTourette, Republican of Ohio, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “There isn’t a finer man, there isn’t a finer member of Congress, there isn’t a finer human being.”
Emboldened by his popular support, Traficant attempted to do what he always did: rally the valley against the outsiders he claimed were trying to besmirch its name. Over the last year, he has defiantly called his convicted former top aide, O’Nesti, a “good friend” and championed a local sheriff convicted of racketeering, arguing that he should be moved to a prison closer to Youngstown to be near his ill mother. Traficant said of members of the F.B.I., “These sons of bachelors will not intimidate me, and they won’t jack me around.”
Though he refused to talk to me or to other reporters (“I’ll only make an official statement when I’m actually killed,” he said), he and his staff released a torrent of press releases attacking those pursuing him. “TRAFICANT BILL WOULD CREATE NEW AGENCY TO INVESTIGATE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT,” one release said. Another said, “TRAFICANT WANTS PRESIDENT TO INVESTIGATE FEDERAL AGENTS IN YOUNGSTOWN.” On the House floor, where his speech was protected against suits for libel, he was even bolder. “Mr. Speaker, I have evidence that certain F.B.I. agents in Youngstown, Ohio, have violated the RICO STATUTE and… stole large sums of cash,” he claimed. “What is even worse, they ‘suggested’ to one of their field operative informants that he should commit murder. Mr. Speaker, murder.”
Before I left Youngstown, I stopped by the F.B.I. office in Boardman, Ohio, where Kroner and his boss, Andy Arena, were trying to fend off Traficant’s allegations. They were careful not to say anything about the pending investigation of the Congressman, but it was clear they were under siege. On talk radio, Traficant supporters denounced Kroner as a thief, a con man, a crook, a creep, a liar, and a dope dealer. “The thing that most depressed me,” Kroner told me, “was when I became the subject on talk radio one day and they were discussing my integrity.” He folded his arms. “I just have to block out [those] things.” Rather than a hero, he had become almost a pariah. “Everything is turned upside down here,” Arena said.
As Kroner sat in his neatly pressed jacket and loafers, with his twenty-year-anniversary F.B.I. medallion mounted prominently on a thick gold ring, he seemed slightly defensive. “Every time we charge another public official, the [media] presents it as another black eye for the community,” he said. “I’d prefer if they’d portray it to the community as another step in cleansing ourselves. We’ve got to take a look at what’s being done here as a positive thing.”
After a while, Kroner offered to show me around the valley. As the sun was setting, we drove in his car past the old steel mills, past the Greek Coffee House and the Doll House and other gambling dens, past the place where Bernie the Jew met with his team of hit men and where Strollo had Ernie Biondillo killed. “We’re a part of this community like everyone else,” Kroner said. “We suffer the same problems if we live in a corrupt town.” He paused for a moment, perhaps because he couldn’t think of anything to add or perhaps because he realized that, after a lifetime of fighting the Mafia, there was little more that he could do. Finally, he said, “As long as they choose to put people in office who are corrupt, nothing will ever change.”
– July, 2000
In November, 2000, Traficant was elected to a ninth term in Congress. Six months later, he was indicted on ten counts of bribery, racketeering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice. Among the charges were that he did political favors for the Buccis in exchange for fee construction services on his farm, and assisted others in return for thousands of dollars in kickbacks. Traficant was also accused of asking an aide to lie to a federal grand jury and to destroy incriminating evidence. (The aide told authorities that Traficant watched while he took a blowtorch to envelopes that had once contained cash payoffs to the Congressman.)
The trial began in a federal district court in Cleveland in February of 2002, and, as Traficant had done nearly two decades earlier, he decided to represent himself. He accused the prosecution of having “the testicles of an ant,” and at one point stormed out of the courtroom. Yet this time a jury found him guilty on every count.
Saying he was “full of deceit and corruption and greed,” the judge sentenced Traficant to eight years in prison. In addition, the judge ordered that he pay more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in fines and nearly twenty thousand dollars in unpaid taxes, and return ninety-six thousand dollars in illegal proceeds.