G-MAN HELPED FUEL MOB WAR, SAY FEDS

Federal prosecutors teamed up with defense attorneys yesterday to pummel a retired FBI supervisor in court, admitting he probably leaked government secrets to a top-echelon mob informant.
Prosecutors conceded retired FBI supervisor Lindley DeVecchio gave information to mob mole Gregory Scarpa that helped fuel a war in the Colombo crime family.
A Brooklyn federal judge is trying to determine whether convicted Colombo crime boss Victor Orena deserves a new trial because, during his 1992 trial, prosecutors didn’t reveal the relationship between DeVecchio and Orena.
While calling the relationship between DeVecchio and Scarpa “an awful, horrible sideshow,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Valerie Caproni insisted that Orena would have been convicted anyway.
“There is a strong circumstantial case that DeVecchio leaked information to Scarpa. We don’t contest that. But so what?” Caproni asked.
Her remarks came at the end of two days in which DeVecchio testifying under immunity angrily denied leaking information to Scarpa that may have fueled the 1991-92 war.
Eleven people were slain and many others wounded during the violence on the streets of Brooklyn.
“It was horrible to watch DeVecchio sit up there and make up answers as he went along,” Caproni said.
She told Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein there is other evidence linking Orena and associate Pasquale Amato to the crimes for which they were convicted.
Orena defense attorneys Gerald Shargel and Benjamin Brafman have argued that a jury should decide whether the DeVecchio-Scarpa relationship is relevant.
About 16 other reputed mobsters were acquitted in trials in which juries were told about DeVecchio and Scarpa.
DeVecchio yesterday tried to defend reopening Scarpa as an informant after another mobster implicated him in a murder plot. He said his supervisors knew about the allegations against Scarpa, but under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis he conceded there was no proof FBI brass knew.
Weinstein said he would issue a ruling in the case Monday.