Yeah, it's at best extremely hard to believe Joe Bonnano didn't know that Galante and other Bonnano family members were making millions of dollars in heroin. In addition to Galante's activities and Bonnano's own trips to Sicily (which, according to the testimony of a Sicilian mafioso, were made to arrange narcotics shipments), there's also the Cotroni brothers. In "The Complete Idiot's Guide To The Mafia," Jerry Capeci notes that in 1959, Bonnano's captain in Montreal, Vincenzo "Vic" Cotroni, was arrested on charges of conspiring to violate U.S. narcotics laws. Later that year, Vic's brother Giuseppe pled guilty to heroin conspiracy charges. Despite this, Vic remained Bonnano's representative in Montreal. This hardly suggests that Bonnano had no tolerance for drug trafficking by members of his family.

Believing Bonnano's claim that he didn't tolerate drug dealing is like believing Albert Speer's claim that he had no knowledge of the Holocaust, despite being arguably the closest person to Hitler in the entire Third Reich. And Bonnano can't have it both ways--if he really didn't know, then he certainly wasn't nearly as smart as he claimed to be!