Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

PETER MAAS: Well, I think a lot of people around the country are not surprised about what happened at Watergate. That's another thing that makes this book so important in my mind. For most people, the only government they ever come in direct contact with are police departments and most people know they're corrupt. And so why shouldn't Watergate with Washington be any different? It's just an extension of the same thing.

The difference in Serpico is that it's so highly dramatic. I've gotten one review from a paper in the East that said that the story was worse than Watergate because it touches much more on our daily lives. Because the kind of corruption that Frank Serpico was fighting and almost lost his life fighting, let me define it.

It is corruption that starts with a traffic ticket bribe and ends up in the traffic in heroin. And it touches every quality of our life. And so I subscribe somewhat to that theory that it is worse than Watergate.

And this was not really an investigative job. This was a writing job. This was something that I wanted to get into Frank Serpico's head. I wanted to know what he was thinking, what other people were thinking, as well as what they were saying and doing at that time. And it's not so much an investigation into corruption as an effort on my part to communicate what's at stake here for all of us through an extraordinary individual.

It is an exciting story. I've been gratified when most people say, it's reads like a thriller and it is. The difference is that it's all true and affects all of us.

CONNIE GOLDMAN: Do you think the book will affect all of us?

PETER MAAS: Well, I think you've got the public gets involved. I mentioned the span of corruption starts with the traffic ticket bribe. That's often the public out there trying to, in effect, corrupt the policeman. And he starts down the chute as it were and he keeps moving into bigger and bigger things. And it finally ends up in heroin, which is organized.

Serpico noted most of the cops he worked with were terrific at their job. They knew everything that was going on, all the rackets in their area. But their only motivation for finding out was to get money.

And what happens-- this is really the final line, there was this excuse that a veteran policeman told Serpico. He said, look, there's clean money and dirty money and we only take the clean money. And he was referring to the so-called victimless crimes, the prostitution, illegal gambling, and so on where the dirty money was narcotics, heroin, and so on. But as Serpico noted, the distinction became increasingly blurred. So finally, it was not clean money and dirty money but just money.

CONNIE GOLDMAN: It's so easy to fall into it. And then all of a sudden, it's really corruption.

PETER MAAS: That's right. Now, Serpico said, I once said, you're asking too much of policemen. But as I said before, this is for most people, government is what they come in contact with. And Serpico's attitude was that nobody asks somebody to become a cop. But he believed that the policemen should not reflect society, but should exemplify what it should be.

Now, if this is too high a standard, he said he could only speak for himself. But as I see what's happening in the country in Washington today, and Watergate, and all of that, I think we need standards that are that high or we're all going to be in a lot of trouble.

CONNIE GOLDMAN: Comments by Peter Moss, author of The Valachi Papers and more recently Serpico, The Cop Who Defied the System. I'm Connie Goldman.