I used to see a psychiatrist named Dimitrios Georgopoulos, M.D. at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC. Dr. Georgopoulos was always trying to get me to take medication: antipsychotic medication. When I asked him why he recommended antipsychotic medication for me, he said I was suspicious. He said I needed medication to moderate my suspiciousness. He explained on one occasion that my suspiciousness might be preventing me from making friends. He said that people don't want to be friends with people who are suspicious.
That is patently wrong. It's not necessarily true that a suspicious person will have a problem making friends. The FBI uses undercover agents. Some of these agents infiltrate organized crime families. As a law enforcement officer, the undercover FBI agent is wary, suspicious, and hypervigilant all the time in his relations with organized crime figures. But he or she is able to conceal his suspiciousness. FBI undercover agents are readily welcomed into criminal enterprises despite their chronic wariness.
It's possible to be extremely suspicious and conceal one's mental state. Yes, suspicious people can make friends with people who never suspect the suspicousness of the other party.
Some psychiatrists have no idea what they are talking about.
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FBI Wiseguy Fooled The Mob:
Cuban-American Is Only Second FBI Agent In History To Be Offered Mafia Membership
The FBI's Wiseguy
The FBI undercover agent who brought down high-level mobsters tells how he infiltrated the Gambino family and shows his face for the first time, undeterred by the Mafia's penchant for revenge. Armen Keteyian reports.
In his first interview, infamous Boston mob triggerman John Martorano coolly explains why and how he murdered 20 people to protect his friends, family and his gang's business. Steve Kroft reports.
The law finally caught up with Bernardo Provenzano after decades on the run. His capture, however, will probably do little to curb the ubiquitous influence of the Italian Mafia. In real life and on the screen, Americans are fascinated by the Mob. Find out more about actual dons and their fictional counterparts.
Few institutions protect their secrets as passionately - and more violently - than the Mafia. Being accepted into the inner sanctum of the mob demands from its members a blood oath of loyalty, known as "omerta."
Imagine then what it was like when a Cuban-American FBI agent infiltrated the most feared crime family in America, posing as an Italian gangster.
Now that agent, Jack Garcia, comes out from undercover for the first time and tells CBS News correspondent Armen Keteyian how he did it, and how he was able to fool the wisest of the wiseguys by delivering an acting performance that was more believable than anything Hollywood could produce.
"I always played the big role. I mean my mantra was, you know, 'Think big, be big,'" Joaquin "Jack" Garcia tells Keteyian. "And I was able to be the type of guy that never in a million years would somebody suspect that I was an agent."
Garcia may be the most unlikely law enforcement figure in history - all 390 pounds of him - whose performance was so convincing that he was offered the Mafia's highest honor: to become a "made man" in the mob.
"In the mob world, in the mob culture, that is the holy grail. For an associate to be proposed for membership into La Cosa Nostra is what these criminals aspire to do," Garcia explains. "To become a made man. The fact that they allowed an FBI agent to infiltrate their organization, and add to that the fact that I'm Cuban born playing an Italian who was able to fool them, it's an amazing insult to them."
For Garcia, his invitation to become a sworn-member of the mob capped a career working a staggering 100 major undercover cases. But none compared with "Jack Falcone," the character he created in 2002 to get inside the Gambino crime family, playing the role of an investor in a strip club that the Gambinos, and one of their ruthless leaders, Greg DePalma, were muscling in on.
"Jack Falcone entered the scene in the Bronx, New York. He was a guy who was a jewel thief, and he was a guy who was an extortionist and a hijacker. I drove a fancy car at the time. I had the Rolex Presidents watch. I had the obligatory three-carat diamond pinky. I had the cross," Garcia remembers. "Then of, course, the suits. All gotta be Italian. You gotta get your Brionis, you gotta get your Zegna. Look, you got my size. There aren't too many Zegnas or Brionis in my size. It's this package that you wanna create. You don't play the role of this big money launderer, and then show up in a Yugo."
Garcia was the complete package: more than 20 years experience as an FBI agent, combined with a style and charm that mobsters could not resist. "I was this big guy with a lot of cash who everybody wanted to be around. I would disarm the person by always being nice. 'Hey, you're looking great today. Where did you get those nice threads, man? Look at you. You look like a million dollars.' 'Oh yeah, I look good. Oh yeah, I love those blue shoes.' Everybody loves a happy guy," he says.
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