FBI chief: Deputy talked to friend with mob ties

A deputy U.S. marshal admitted in an emotional confrontation with federal lawmen he told secrets of a major organized crime investigation to a longtime friend with ties to the mob, Chicago's top FBI agent testified Monday.

"It started with denials, then it was 'I want to cooperate,' then it was 'I made a huge mistake -- I was friends with people I shouldn't have been,'" said Robert Grant, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago office.

John T. Ambrose, 42, a deputy U.S. marshal on unpaid leave, is charged with leaking secrets of the government's Operation Family Secrets mob investigation and lying to federal investigators about it.

The trial is going into its second week and Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Macarthur told U.S. District Judge John F. Grady that the government may rest its case as early as Tuesday afternoon.

The Family Secrets investigation was aimed at the top echelon of the Chicago Outfit as the local mob family calls itself, and resulted in 13 convictions including those of three top mob bosses who got life sentences.

In October 2002 and again in May 2003, Ambrose was assigned to guard Nicholas Calabrese, an admitted mob hit man who became the star witness of the Family Secrets case after the FBI gathered evidence that could send him to the execution chamber.

Calabrese was the only so-called made member of the Outfit to cooperate with the government and the leak is believed to be the only one in the 39-year history of the government's Witness Security Program (WITSEC), which is designed to protect witnesses from mobsters, terrorists and others bent on silencing them.

Grant and U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who preceded him to the witness stand, both said their September 2006 confrontation with Ambrose was emotional.

His carotid artery was visibly throbbing and he was plainly stressed, they said.

Grant testified that after initial denials, Ambrose admitted divulging information from a highly confidential WITSEC file to a former Chicago police officer with ties to reputed Chicago mob boss John "No Nose" DiFronzo.

"He admitted that he had given up details of the Witness Security Program, of the participation of Nicholas Calabrese," Grant testified.

Among other things, Ambrose admitted telling the former officer that DiFronzo's name was in the file, Grant testified.

The officer was one of the so-called Marquette 10, Chicago policemen sent to prison in the early 1980s for shaking down drug pushers and other offenses.

Ambrose's father was also a member of the Marquette 10 and died in prison.

Federal investigators discovered that someone was leaking WITSEC material when they bugged a conversation between reputed mobsters James and Michael Marcello in the visitors room at a federal prison in Milan, Mich. The two men were overheard talking about a law enforcement source whose father was one of the Marquette 10.

Ambrose's fingerprint was later found inside the WITSEC file.

Defense attorney Francis C. Lipuma told jurors at the start of the trial that if Ambrose said anything he shouldn't have he was merely boasting to a family friend about the importance of his job as a federal deputy marshal.