Thank you, Apple, here it is. Please bear with me:


Congressional committees publish their schedule of hearings months in advance, the better to allow members to milk the publicity value and win votes. Roth would have learned that the Senate was scheduling hearings on organized crime. As an organized crime figure himself, Roth would take a keen interest in them. And he would have heard that Questadt, the committee’s chief counsel, was “for sale.” So he would have “bought” Questadt, who was a valuable property—as the top staff guy in a major investigation of organized crime, Questadt would have useful contacts with Federal, state and local law enforcement, including New York.

When the NYC cops broke up the attempted murder of Pentangeli, he was, as Hagen told Michael, “half-dead, scared, talking out loud about how you betrayed him.” The NYC detectives would see immediately that they had a potential Mob turncoat. They would have kept Frankie’s survival secret, the better to protect him against another attempt on his life while they worked to keep him talking about his boss, Michael Corleone. They also would have called Questadt, to tell him that they landed a big fish.

Questadt would immediately see dollar signs: this info would be worth diamonds to himself and to Roth. He’d call the New York County District Attorney (maybe the NY State Attorney General) and convince him to turn Frankie over to the FBI. The DA would agree. Why? Because New York wouldn’t have a chance of convicting Michael on Frankie’s confessions and/or testimony alone.

[LAW STUFF]: The big charges against Michael—the Sollozzo/McCluskey murders and the massacre of the Dons—occurred many years earlier, and the Statute of Limitations had run out on those crimes in late 1958, when Frankie was captured. Also, New York would need corroborating witnesses to back up Frankie’s stories, and they wouldn’t get any, given Michael’s reputation for ruthlessness. But Questadt would tell the New York DA that the Feds could prosecute Frankie for crimes not specific to New York, such as being in charge of all the gambling and narcotics in America,” or having “secret” ownership of hotels in Nevada; and maybe even nail him for perjury on the earlier crimes. And Questadt would tell the NY authorities that the Feds would assume the responsibility—and the cost—of housing, feeding and protecting Frankie. New York would hand Frankie over to the FBI. [END OF LAW STUFF]

So, why didn’t Michael know about Frankie’s survival? Michael ran his New York operation by proxy through Frankie. Contacts with the police would be through Frankie, not Michael. In fact, since Michael was obsessed with being “respectable,” it’d be in his interest not to have direct contacts with the NYC police—let Frankie do it. So, the NYC cops might not even have known that Michael was Frankie’s boss; or maybe the cops who grabbed Frankie and kept his survival secret weren’t those whom Frankie paid off.

Now for the denouement:

By this time, Roth had escaped Cuba and recovered from his stroke and attempted assassination. He’d feed Questadt incriminating evidence on Michael and anything else he knew, including the famous brothel murder that implicated Senator Geary, a member of the committee. Questadt would have no problem convincing his bosses, the Senators, to go along: they’d see that they could become famous for nailing Michael Corleone in televised hearings by setting a perjury trap for him. The key player would be Geary. Questadt would work the brothel-murder angle to get Questadt to trap Michael. Questadt would tell Geary: “Here’s your chance to get revenge on Michael Corleone.” The unspoken threat: “I know about that brothel murder—if you don’t go along, you’ll be exposed.”

Willie Cicci was the unwitting trap: Since the committee didn’t acknowledge that they had Frankie, it looked like Cicci was the top witness against Michael. Then Geary played his part. He asked Cicci a question seemingly helpful to Michael: “Did you ever get a direct order from him [Michael]? Or was there always a buffer?” “No, I never talked to him,” replied Cicci. Michael relaxed: The committee had no one who could testify that they got a direct order from Michael; therefore it was safe to deny all the committee’s charges under oath because no one could contradict him. Little did he know that the committee had Frankie waiting in the wings. The beauty part: the committee didn’t have to prove that Michael committed any of the crimes they asked him about, nor did they have to produce corroborating witnesses. They had him on perjury—a charge that can be sustained on the say-so of a single witness (Frankie) and a prosecutor clever enough to convince a jury to believe him. Each charge of perjury carries a five-year sentence. Michael could have gone away for 25 years without ever having been convicted of murder, gambling, narcotics, etc. Clever Questadt and Roth!