01x01 - 1980-83: Chaos Spells Opportunity

[bunniefuu]

[narrator] new york city: By the end
of the 1970s, it was a city on its knees,

In a country that
was losing its mind.

[man] it's a w*r
out on the street.

The american dream
had become a nightmare,

And no place felt as rotten
and as hopeless as new york.

[man 2] they're gonna make a
ghost town out of the city of new york.

[darryl mcdaniels] it was a w*r zone, without
tanks and planes and people dropping bombs.

But, suddenly...

[woman] happy new year!

...At the dawn of
a new decade...

[woman 2] it felt
like really good sex.

...There was something
else in the air: Opportunity.

[man 3] boom times.

It was everywhere in the 80s,
and five new yorkers pounced.

[news reader] ivan boesky, wall
street's biggest independent speculator,

And according to forbes,
one of the richest men in this country.

One of the great things about
this nation is that we can seek profit.

[news reader] leona helmsley,
the emblem of the helmsley hotel empire.

[leona helmsley] I'm a dangerous
character. Watch out, everybody.

[news reader] trump, it's taking on new
meaning; tycoon, billionaire, maverick.

[donald trump] the concept
of what I'm trying to do,

In terms of real estate,
is the best.

[news reader] john gotti,
alias the godfather, the boss.

[john gotti] you
guys [inaudible].

[news reader] giuliani has sewn
himself into the fabric of this city.

[rudolph giuliani] this is a terrible,
terrible emergency.

They broke rule,
flaunted their wealth...



...Bulldozed
anyone in their way...

Hey, tell me about it.

...And we worshiped them for it.

[andrew j. Maloney] he's a
m*rder*r. He's not a folk hero.

By the end of the decade, they had
reshaped the city in their own image...

Look at this. I mean, wouldn't you want
your daughter to bring this guy home?

...And at what cost?

[tovah feldshuh] a tipster had
information that would clearly prove

That they were defrauding
the united states government.

[charles bagli] he agreed to
act as an undercover agent.

[bethany mclean] it's really
a shocking turn of events.

You know it's all gonna
come to a crashing halt.

Pick your poison.

It might be money,
it might be sex, it might be drugs.

[gil troy] he said,
"I wish you could see her naked."

Even today,
it makes me uncomfortable.

[david cay johnston] if you
think I just slandered you, sue me.

These five titans would change
the meaning of the american dream,

And help define
the way we live now.

The city,

Our country,

The world,

Good evening, and welcome to nbc news's
coverage of the 1980 presidential election.

Our team of correspondents,
analysts, pollsters, and commentators

Is assembled here in new
york and around the country

To see if jimmy carter
can win re-election,

Or if ronald reagan will
be going to the oval office

-[reagan] are you better off than you were four years ago?
- No.

[jimmy carter] it is a
crisis of confidence.

[gil troy] jimmy carter was
a perfect fit for the 1970s:

A misfire of a president
for a misfire of a decade.

It's a decade of inflation,
of vietnam, of watergate...

[richard nixon] I shall resign the
presidency, effective at noon tomorrow.

...A decade where americans are starting to
wonder whether the american dream is over.

It's a decade where,
all of a sudden,

The greatest city in the world,
new york city, might go bankrupt.

[news reader] the city of
dreams is becoming a nightmare.

$13 billion in debt and
teetering on bankruptcy.

New york is hanging by a thread,
and only seems to be getting worse.

[news reader] 19,000
municipal workers

Lost their jobs today,
because of budget cuts.

[michael holman] a whole block
would be covered with garbage bags,

That would sit there for weeks

And stink up the place,
and this was normal.

[news reader] about 5,000 policeman,
also, were laid off.

This is comparable to laying
off soldiers during a w*r.

[news read] four people
are m*rder*d here every day.

There's a violent
crime every four minutes

[darryl mcdaniels] "it's
just like a jungle sometimes.

It makes me wonder how I keep from
going under," was the vibe of everybody.

[news reader] some people
once called new york "fun city."

Now, police and firemen unions
in new york are calling it "fear city."

[troy] new york city becomes the center
and the symbol of america's decline.

[mcdaniels] new
york was finished.

But,
in the midst of chaos lies opportunity.

And some savvy new yorkers were
ready to make their move in 1980,

When an unlikely
candidate shocked the world.

[news reader] reagan
is our projected winner.

Ronald wilson reagan of california:
A sports announcer, a film actor

This man, who's dismissed.
Ronald reagan? He's a joke.

Ronald reagan? He's an actor.
Ronald reagan? He's an imbecile.

[news reader] I don't
think anyone anticipated

That it eventually would
become a floodgate,

Of one kind or another, where the votes
would just flood in for ronald reagan.

[troy] but ronald reagan
understood that hope is a drug,

And he sold this story of
america on the way back.

[reagan] this country
needs a new administration,

Where there will be new
dedication to the dream of america:

An administration that will give that dream
new life, and make america great again.

[ken auletta] reagan comes in in 1980,
and he believes in capitalism.

He believes that we have to
lower taxes for the wealthy,

Because that will trickle
down to everyone else.

And we have to deregulate businesses,
so business would be freer to create jobs.

[reagan] I would like to
have a crusade today,

To take government off the backs
of the great people of this country.

[andrew ross sorkin] all of a sudden,
reagan shows up on the doorstep and says,

"no, no, no. We're deregulating everything."
one of the first things he does is he says,

"look at this case. There's
an anti-trust case against ibm."

He said, "it's over." the justin
department ended the case.

The message was: Game
on; everything is for sale.

Ronald reagan opens this spigot. Ronald
reagan starts getting the money flowing again.

It brings back a confidence to wall street. It
brings back a confidence to the stock market.

It brings back a confidence to the american
investor. And, in fact, changes all of them.

It enabled the rise of this
much more aggressive,

Much more hostile,
much more money-oriented culture.

[andrew ross sorkin] so, as animal
spirits are filling the air everywhere,

This new class of investor arrives on
the scene, to become a takeover artist.

Using debt from wall street,
they're gonna go buy companies

That never would have
been takeover bait before.

[news reader] takeover mania in america.
Huge corporations are gobbling one another,

At a rate unmatched in history.

[natalie byfield] this was the
era of mergers and acquisitions,

And they were being
celebrated as heroes.

Wall street becomes a
symbol of the new gilded age,

And the best symbol of that...

...Is ivan boesky.

A man who came from nothing,
and reinvented himself on wall street.

He was a master of secrets,

With an aggressiveness the
financial world had never seen before.

And he had nowhere to go,
but up.

[bryan burrough] ivan boesky was this
great white shark, out there in the ocean.

You knew he was out there.
Every now and then, he would attack.

Very few of us had any real
sense of ivan boesky as a person,

But the picture that emerged
was this kind of classic,

Archetypal thing of this spectral,
gaunt, white haired guy,

Always in black.

He was just this ghost.

Ivan boesky was a trader,
who is known as an arbitrager.

[news reader] "what is
an arbitrager?" you ask.

It is a person, such as boesky,
who buys up stock

And takes a big gamble
that prices will rise,

So that he can sell the stock at a higher
price. Of course, if no takeover occurs,

An arbitrager like boesky
could end up losing a bundle.

His specialty in life
was betting on deals,

When one company was buying another
company, whether the deal would close.

[bryan burrough] arbs
trafficked in information:

What was going on? Who was in
play? Who was gonna be attacked next?

[sorkin] everybody's calling each other on
the phone, trying to get that little morsel.

What is that one little thing,
that's gonna give them an edge?

And so, boesky had this reputation
for literally living on the telephone,

All day and night,
and literally like this, all day long.

Pacing in front of monitors,
barking at his traders

[boesky] if we have that shot,
we'd like to [inaudible] again.

Screaming at just about
anybody who would move,

And if it didn't work out for him,
he was throwing things.

[jeff madrick] I was in boesky's office
once. He was shouting at his traders,

And he would say, "act one, scene one." he
said that to me, like he was play-acting.

He did a lot of play-acting. His
employees would do anything, however,

Because he made a heck of a lot of money,
and they thought he was a magician.

Almost anything
that you can think

Of the michael douglas
character in the movie wall street...

[douglas] you keep on
buying. Dilute the son of a b*tch.

...A lot of that was
based on boesky,

And not just his famous "greed is
good" speech, which came from boesky

Greed, for lack of a better word,
is good.

Ivan boesky is, in some ways,
kind of a great gatsby character, right?

This self-made person,
very much invented.

[jeff madrick] he was
a classic outsider.

Ivan boesky was deeply
insecure. He didn't do well in school.

He didn't go to harvard
law school. That was certain.

[burrough] ivan boesky didn't really wanna
tell the truth about where he'd come from,

And so he often made these hints of
mysterious things in his background.

Maybe he'd gone to harvard. Well, no, he
actually bought his way into the harvard club.

Maybe he'd been with the cia in iran. No,
he was just visiting a friend's family.

But all that's much better to say than,
"I came to new york

'cause I needed a job,
after bankrupting my family's strip joint."

Ivan was the son of
russian immigrants.

From an early age,
he had his eyes to the sky,

And one of the things he
did was he married well.

Seema silberstein came from a
very wealthy real estate family.

They owned the beverley hills hotel.
And so, he gets a lot more money

A lot more capital, and they allowed
ivan to move up the social ladder.

[madrick] ivan had a friend who was in risk
arbitrage, and the guy was doing very well,

So he went home to
seema and he said,

"seema, this sounds like the thing
for me." so, ivan went to wall street.

[james b. Stewart] one of
the ironies of the boesky story

Is that, at his first job,
he lost money.

He got fired. He tried to get other
jobs. He couldn't get a job anywhere.

Thanks, in part, to his wife's family
money, who bankrolled a new operation,

He started his
own arbitrage firm.

Ivan boesky quickly became one
of the best known risk arbitragers.

[burrough] when you look at his career,
early on, some big wins.

Ivan has rebounded.

It's a type of reinvention that, there are
very few places in america you can achieve.

It's often a field that's
described in gambling terms:

A roll of the dice, high stakes,
speculators. Are you a gambler?

Part of the magic of wall street in the


I really think it's a highly conservative
activity, that is often misunderstood.

I don't feel like I'm a gambler and I
hope you don't think I look like one.

No,
but I'll bet you have nerves of steel.

Well, I can't say that,

Except that one has to be able to
withstand a certain amount of pressure.

[sorkin] all of a sudden,
you're doubling your money.

And that can be a very
empowering feeling,

But also a dangerous one, because it
creates an enormous amount of confidence

And that confidence, I think,
very quickly turns into over confidence.

[news read] new york city,
it is a paradox.

Amid the frenzy of chasing a dream,
and perhaps a fortune,

It is a decaying metropolis where charles
dickens would find a lot to write about:

A city literally falling apart.

[nikki haskell] in the 70s and the beginning
of the 80s, new york was really at a low ebb

I was still having a good time,
mind you.

There were great clubs,
great restaurants.

I went dancing every night. There was a club
called la club, and it was a private club.

It was very chic, had a little dance floor,
and everybody went there.

And a man walked in, and I saw him walk in,
and I went up to the maître d'

And I said, "who is that?"

He said, "oh, you know,
he's a new member.

His name is donald trump."

A kid from queens, with charisma
to spare and something to prove.

In a city where
image was everything,

He knew that to be the
king of new york real estate

He only needed to act like it.

Well, I'm very happy, and I think the
city of new york is going to be very happy.

Donald was a man about town. He was someone who
was going to all of the fanciest restaurants

With a beautiful wife, trying to
make the zaniest real estate deals.

He was someone who really wanted
to make his name, and make his mark.

[charles bagli] and that meant
getting something going in manhattan.

And to establish his reputation,
he needed to do something splashy.

We're going to do something,
which is going to be

A great stride forward
for new york city.

[bagli] you've got this crisis of confidence.
Is the city gonna come out of the doldrums?

Is there gonna be
new development?

And trump, very craftily,
wanted to take advantage of that.

When you need to re-develop an area,
the first mover gets the best deal.

When new york was almost broke,
and other builders were jumping ship,

Trump took a chance on
the old commodore hotel.

[trump] the commodore hotel,
an abandoned building,

Next to grand central
terminal in new york.

The city was in serious trouble.
That location was not considered good.

This was gonna prove that he
could compete with the big guys,

With the prominent
manhattan developers.

[news reader] trump spent millions
transforming it into the grand hyatt,

And the city got
a shot in the arm.

[hugh carey] hyatt regency
is now an architectural gem.

Its mirrored finish reflects a new
day on this, the street of dreams,



Donald trump deserves tremendous credit
for coming into new york in the late 1970s,

Seeing a hulking,
depressing, decaying hotel,

And turning it into the magic of
the grand central station hyatt.

[news read] donald trump would probably say
he's already proven himself a master builder.

He feels the grand hyatt hotel
proved him a man of vision.

[barbara res] I think the hyatt
was a water ship for trump's career,

Because he was really not well known.
It was a turning point where you said,

"okay, we have to take this guy
seriously. He's accomplished something."

[troy] the new york times is
impressed by his bravado.

They called him,
"the brash adonis from the outer boroughs."

And donald trump, in the 1980s, in many
ways becomes a symbol of new york's return.

Donald plays right into this. He presents
himself as this super genius of business

From a real estate standpoint, it's probably
become the hottest city in the world.

People are flocking
here by droves,

And I guess a lot of
things had to do with it.

Mostly it was the psychology of making
new york a winner, as opposed to a loser.

But, donald's success with his first
project was very much tied to his father

Whether he acknowledged it,
or not, publicly.

His father was a very big
outer borough developer.

He had built many buildings for middle
and working class people in brooklyn.

It was a sort of meat and potatoes,
but he was a millionaire

And he was very well connected,
politically.

[johnston] when his older son, fred jr.,
turned out to be a rather sensitive fellow,

Who couldn't put up with his
tyrannical father's nature and coldness,

Donald saw opportunity, and he stepped
forward and became the favored son.

But donald didn't wanna be his father,
at the end of avenue z in brooklyn.

He wanted to be a
star in manhattan.

If he failed, he'd have to retreat to
queens and become just another one

Of the faceless outer borough
developers. And that was his worst fear.

Trying to scrape
up a down payment

For a little fixer-upper
in your neighborhood?

Take a look at my next guest.

There's a report around wall street,
that this is what he has in mind.

This is donald trump,


And some people think that he
wants to buy the world trade center,


can pick up, if they've got the coins.

Donald trump, as I say,
is just 33 years old.

He took his father's rather modest,
by current standards,

Real estate empire in brooklyn
and expanded it considerably.

He now has an apartment
for sale in a new trump building,

Called the trump tower,
going up on fifth avenue.

There it is. You can buy this apartment,
one floor of it -

One whole floor of that building,
that is - $11 billion altogether.

[res] donald trump wanted
trump tower to be iconic.

He wanted it to be the first of its
kind. He wanted it to be world famous.

He wanted to make a ton of money from it, and
he wanted to become the new york developer.

It was a statement.

The commodore was just
replenishing something that existed.

This was building
something that was new.

[news reader] donald trump
is the young entrepreneur,

Whose buildings keep popping
up all over town like mushrooms.

He wants a certain tax abatement
on one of them, the trump tower.

[bagli] pretty early on, donald
discovered that the best way to operate

Is with other people's money.

So, he had his hand out
to the city for a tax break,

That was designed to
stimulate low income housing.

He felt that he
qualified for that,

Even though trump tower was
for the most elite of new yorkers.

[news reader] trump is an expert at getting
what he wants, particularly from politicians.

He's gotten tax abatements
and other concessions.

Politicians have gotten
campaign contributions - big ones.

But then, you get a new mayor.

[ed koch] how have
you the chutzpah to say

That this government has
been anti-development?

Ed koch was elected mayor,
and he injected great spirit into new york.

He was a little bit more of a populist,
and wasn't so enamored of donald trump.

[george arzt] donald had contributed
something like $700,000 to koch's campaigns,

And he felt that he could just walk in the
door at city hall, and get what he wanted.

He found that, under koch,
it was never true.

[michael kruse] with
respect to trump tower,

Ed koch was pushing back pretty
hard on the idea of a tax break.

So, when trump applied for it,
they said, "rejected."

[news reader] place of prosperity,
for sure.

Too prosperous,
in the eyes of state appeals court judges,

Who turned down trump's attempt
to get a tax abatement for the project.

This did not make
donald trump happy.

[bagli] so,
donald trump sued the city.

[news reader] donald trump
to fight the city in the court,

Demanding tens of millions
of dollars in tax abatements.

[andrew kirtzman] you had these two
titanic egos, in donald trump and ed koch.

What was most interesting, was kind
of watching them clash with one another.

We're not able to
say to donald trump,

"donald, get richer on the backs of
the people of the city and their treasury."

I can't do that.

I would say he's got no talent,
and only moderate intelligence.

Donald trump learned from his father,
you're a winner or you're a loser.

The ends justify the means.

What ed koch has is nothing.
The man has not got it.

Here he is, suing the city and arguing
with the mayor in the most bitter terms.

And, on the other hand, he was also telling
the public that this was for their good.

He was gonna build a golden-hued tower,
that would put new york back on the map.

Who could argue with that?

Trump went to court,
and he won. He got his abatement.

This tax break was never
intended for a luxury project,

And after a long court fight,
he did get a tax break.

[news reader] developer donald
trump will enjoy the largess of the city,

In the form of what the
city says is a tax abatement

Worth $20 million,
over the next ten years.

From then on, it was off to the
races. And the trump brand began.

[kruse] but the more successes he had,
the bolder and the more brazen he got.

What could he possibly do,
that would trump trump tower?

A few years into the 80s,
change was literally in the air.

Driven by visionaries with an
insatiable appetite for success,

Stunning new construction
exploded across the new york skyline.

Sold. Two trades at six.

On wall street,
charts were rising with no limit in sight.

But while certain corners
of new york were thriving,

Others were being left
to fend for themselves.

And they, too,
would find a way to break through.

Out of the darkness, despair,
destruction, and death

Of the late 70s and early 80s,

It wasn't politics that was gonna save us,
and it wasn't religion. It was the arts.

[rap music playing]

[michael holman] takes a city like
new york, with so many different tribes

And so many different people.

New york influences them.

It permeates,
and they influence new york.

Whatever you wanted to do,
you could do,

Because there was nobody
there to police any of this.

And now,
you see graffiti on every block,

But they're doing all this incredible,
creative work.

So many different artists came here during
that time, saying "new york, I'm here."

It creates a competitiveness,
a cultural competition.

Keith haring started
doing it in the subway,

By doing chalk drawings
on old advertisements.

[keith haring] at that time,
graffiti in new york was really at a peak,

And I think that was also a
main source of inspiration.

[holman] jean-michel basquiat had
come up with equally revolutionary ways

Of expressing himself, by finding doors in
the garbage and using them as a canvass,

And painting on them.

And I'm thinking to myself,

New york is like a theme park.

It's a magical place
for cool people.

It's like disneyland
for the hip.

Very quickly, it was recognized
that we've got something special here.

[news reader] certainly, one man's
vandalism is another man's masterpiece.

Graffiti is entering the
mainstream art scene.

[thurston moore] there was this art that I had
been seeing on doors and walls of buildings,

All around soho
and the east village.

And I remember thinking, they're actually
turning this into real art [laughs]

As opposed to just street art.

[news reader] now,
as post-graffiti artists,

They are getting upwards
of $3,000 per canvas.

[moore] I remember
going to the fun gallery,

And seeing jean-michel's
big coming out show,

And the entire community of
downtown was just like at this fun gallery.

[michael musto] basquiat mixed sort
of a graffiti element, a voodoo element,

And racial inequality screeds,
and social commentary.

It's all extremely original.

Jean-michel basquiat's work was
so brilliant, so beautiful, so powerful,

And so new that he
became a star overnight.

New york was the perfect city

To receive this wave of
creative power and talent.

And when you can make it here,
you can make it anywhere

Because this is the city of competition,
and the winner takes all.

For self-invented
dreamers and schemers,

New york in the early


A new city was rising like
a phoenix from the ashes,

And while artists were leaving
their mark for all to see downtown,

Uptown,
a real estate battle was brewing.

By the time the smoke cleared,
the skyline would never be the same.

You're gonna have to start pusa little
ridiculousow, as far as I'm concerned. Itg

So, just start pushing,
and start pushing as hard as possible.

As much as donald trump wanted to be known as
the developer for the wealthy, for the elite,

He had a rival that was
already established in manhattan.

[news reader] the
helmsley palace hotel,

A 100-year-old roman
renaissance mansion,

Which has been lovingly restored is a tribute
to the vision of mr. And mrs. Harry helmsley.

[glenn plaskin] at the
same time that donald trump

Is the up and coming king
of real estate in new york city,

There was the helmsleys.

Leona and harry helmsley were truly
the king and queen of new york real estate,

And they had recently
opened the helmsley palace.

[tovah feldshuh]
the grand hyatt hotel,

Which opened two weeks after the palace,
and was trump's boutonnière,

Was a commercial hotel. It
was a hotel for conferences.

It didn't compare to
the grace and up-stat

Of the helmsley palace.

And the queen of the
palace was leona helmsley.

And of new york real estate,
queen she was.

She made sure everybody knew it,
too.

The old guard embraced
modesty and graciousness.

She ushered in a new
way of doing business,

Not just in new york,
but in america.

Off with the heads of anyone
who didn't bend the knee.

If you pet me, I'll purr. But if
you hit me, I might scratch.

The fact that leona helmsley had
risen to this level of fame and wealth

Is because she was determined to prevail,
and be number one, and to win.

Leona was born into a very pedestrian,
working class family,

So they did not
have a lot of money.

She had struggled for years through divorces,
trying to raise a son with no money,

Having to move in with her
mother when she was 40.

[elaine taylor-gordon] but she
had fire in the belly from the start,

And she wanted to be rich,

And she knew she was not
going to stay where she was.

She worked her way up,
selling commercial real estate.

She went to work for helmsley,
and that's how she met harry.

When harry and leona met,

Harry was one of the biggest
real estate moguls in new york.

[plaskin] he had worked for
decades to create this empire,

So when leona met him,
it was like meeting god.

Harry helmsley was someone that
donald trump idolized and looked up to.

Donald trump's father never had
that kind of glamorous properties.

But harry helmsley was the king.

[news reader ] everybody
knows the helmsleys in new york,

Because sometimes it
seems they own everything.

[plaskin] and his holdings
amounted to more than $5 billion.

He owned icons,
like the empire state building.

Harry helmsley was
raised as a quaker.

He was very ethical and he
was known to be a gentleman.

[feldshuh] leona fell fast
and hard for harry helmsley.

She went after him
like a bee to honey.

But, at the time he was married, and
she just literally whirled into his life.

[bill dowling] well, she was a very sexy,
attractive woman, and that got his attention.

He was a very successful and wealthy
businessman, and that got her attention.

How their personal
relationship developed after that,

I would attribute more to leona's
aggressiveness than harry's.

[taylor-gordon] her next big vision
was to become mrs. Leona helmsley,

So she was having a
torrid love affair with harry.

[dowling] a couple years later,
he divorced his wife and married leona.

She would say, "can you believe a
little jewish girl, from coney island,

Could snag the richest real
estate mogul in new york city?

Look at his head. You notice it?

Yeah, it's a good looking head.

-He's got a beautiful head. Turn your head, darling.
-[laughs]

-But look, I'll show you.
-I don't believe it. -I swear, I'll show you.

I don't believe it either, 'cause I'm
behind it. What do I know? [laughs]

Darling, no. I'll show you something.
Turn around. Look at the shape of the head.

You can see, the brain just sits
there. I'm very serious. Beautiful head.

It's very easy to caricature
leona helmsley with the old cliché,

"she got her money the
old-fashioned way: She married into it."

It misses the fact

That she actually had a real estate
experience and a real estate vision,

And who may have been
responsible for helping harry helmsley

Take his empire to
a whole other level.

[feldshuh] once he joined forces with her,
the helmsley palace was born

And the name went up,
not just in lights, in gold.

Harry called me one day and said "I've decided
to put leona in charge of the hotel company."

He made her the chief
executive of the hotel chain,

So her word was the final word.

He gave her total authority.

And that's the american dream: We start at
the bottom, and we hope to get to the top.

[feldshuh] harry helmsley
had tremendous faith in her,

And that was the tragedy. Harry,
in his quaker way of life

Saw his name as a signature
at the bottom of a contract.

Leona saw harry's name
across the new york skyline.

And there was the difference. Harry
helmsley came up from the bottom,

And would have remained
at the top of the top

- Both morally, and as one of the
great philanthropists of new york -

Had he not married
leona helmsley.

[news reader] 1982 has, so far,
been a great year for movies.

And today,
e.T. Opens across the city.

[burrough] new york is many, many things,
but it has always been the place

Where the best and brightest of a
generation come to prove themselves.

And when you get
those highly ambitious,

High concentration
of them in a zeitgeist,

Which has no shame about displays
of wealth, you get a moment in history

Unlike any we've ever seen.
Ambition was not a bad thing, anymore.

It was about what you
could get for yourself.

It is not wrong to want a profit
in capitalist america. It's fair.

[jeff madrick] ivan boesky had bottomless
ambitions. There's no question about that.

But, for him, money was the coin of the
realm. That's what made him important.

With wall street on the rebound, and
in the midst of a hostile takeover boom,

Profits were pouring in fast
and easy for the king of arbitrage.

[stewart] ivan boesky became,
far and away,

The most successful of
the so-called risk arbitragers.

He was a legendary
figure on wall street.

But, in a city always looking for the next
big thing, he wanted more, much more.

So, as soon as he got wind of the next massive
takeover target he was ready to go all in.

One of the industries that
was ripe for consolidation

When the 80s dawned
was oil and gas.

So there was a wave of mergers. And soon,
another oil company got teed up: Cities service.

Ultimately,
a bidding w*r erupted. It went on.

There were multiple
suitors who came in.

[news reader] when the markets
reopened trading in cities service,

The company's stock
price jumped more than $6,

Reflecting investor hopes of more
generous takeover offers ahead.

Gulf oil was bidding for it.

Gulf oil came through,
with a hefty $63 a share bid.

Gulf comes in, and boesky effectively
bet that this deal was gonna happen.

[stewart] boesky
had this huge stake.

He had used a lot of
borrowed money to buy.

He was so sure this
was gonna happen.

And he watched the stock go up,
and up, and up, and up.

He thinks he's won the game.

[news reader] after government
concerns in washington

About anti-trust made gulf nervous,
they withdrew.

Ivan was fully invested.

Suddenly, the plug was pulled and
he lost an enormous amount of money.

It was a major surprise
across wall street.

[news reader} the big
news on wall street today

Was still the big oil merger,
that didn't go through.

That has to have been
a huge blow to his ego.

To lose, and lose so publicly,
and lose so big, has gotta be devastating.

[stewart] and this was
what drove boesky.

He needed to find a way to
make these deals risk free.

And to really eliminate risk,
he had to get inside information.

And to get inside information,
that's a tall order.

I mean,
it's ill*gal for people to give it to you.

[harvey pitt] boesky had
friendships with a number of people,

Who could provide information about
things that were under consideration.

One of his friends
was martin siegel.

He was an investment banker at the
firm of kidder peabody and company.

Siegel was advising the kind of companies
that were often the takeover targets.

He would hear when bids were going to be raised,
so he had a wealth of inside information.

Siegel was wildly successful. He
seemed to have everything going for him,

But like a lot of
people on wall street,

He was always worrying about, "well, okay,
this year was good, but what about next year?"

He had financial anxiety, and so boesky took
advantage of that. He immediately suggested,

"look, I could help you out." and then,
boesky really baits the hook.

He says, "if you could put me in things with
some lead time, that would really be valuable."

And siegel says,

"maybe at the end of the year,
we'd work out a bonus."

[mclean] so, ivan boesky and martin
siegel became true partners in crime,

Because it was siegel who provided
boesky with the information he needed

To make his big profits.

And it was boesky who provided siegel,
in turn, with cash.

[stewart] they came up with this
scheme to hand over the money,

Where siegel would show up
in the lobby of the plaza hotel,

And a courier would
hand over a bag.

Siegel had this fear,
this kind of guilt, this nightmare

That this was gonna
come crashing down on him,

And he was panicking.

And then, he saw the man he
assumed was the courier with the case.

[dramatic music playing]

They had code words. The courier's
code was to pass siegel and say,

"red light." if siegel said,
"green light,"

Then he handed the bag
over and they kept moving.

There are elements to this that are all like
a heist movie. It's like ocean's eleven.

They're running
around with briefcases.

They got their code names,
and I think they loved that.

The mystery of marty siegel was always,
"why the heck would you do this?"

I mean, he already had
everything. He was making millions.

[stewart] siegel later said that he
always felt guilty from that day on.

But the line had been crossed.

Ultimately, boesky made over
$30 million on tips from siegel.

Once they'd crossed the line,
they'd crossed it.

All the elements of the
crime were now in place.

There was no going back.

By 1982, new york city was reborn,
uptown and downtown.

New royalty had been anointed,
new fortunes made.

We put them on pedestals,
this new class of the super rich.

In time, the whole world would.

But there was more to
new york than high society.

In many other corners of the city,
crime and chaos still reigned.

[winerip] in terms of crime,
new york was coming apart a little bit.

It was a dangerous time. It was lawless,
in that way.

[news reader] former beatle, john lennon,
is dead tonight of g*nsh*t wounds.

[news reader 2] the biggest city in the
country has a very serious crime problem.

There are more people, more criminals,
and more g*ns on the streets.

[news reader 3] a lot of people
are afraid of crime in new york city.

Operative crime statistics
that keep increasing,

And a criminal justice
system that can't keep up.

New york needed a superhero,
the sheriff coming in with his white hat.

[classical music playing]

[news reader] this is rudolph
giuliani's idea of mood music.

The us attorney has been listening
to italian composers like vivaldi lately,

While he works on indicting
alleged mafia kingpin.

Into this circus
came rudy giuliani.

Crippled by corruption and crime,
new york city needed a hero.

An ambitious young prosecutor knew it,
and he knew what it would do for him.

If ever there was a shortcut to power,
it's fame,

And he would give new
york one hell of a show.

[randy mastro] the
irony of the situation

Was that rudy giuliani left the number
three position in the justice department,

To go be one of over 100 us
attorneys around the country.

But,
rudy wanted to come back home.

[winerip] and he came
with big ambitions.

He was gonna make
a name for himself.

The number three guy doesn't get on
tv very much, in the justice department.

The number one guy in new york can
get on tv as much as he or she wants,

And rudy took full
advantage of that.

[giuliani} we have
to do securities fraud,

Because we have two stock
markets here in new york.

If we don't do it,
nobody's gonna do it.

We have to do drug work, because
we have a big drug problem in this city.

And we have to do
organized crime work,

Because we have five organized
crime families that have decided,

Since the turn of the century,
to locate themselves here in new york.

When giuliani became us attorney he had,
you know, any number of targets, right?

So, there were the excesses on
wall street. There was the mob.

[george gabriel] the mob,
in the 80s,

Was probably as big and powerful
and ruthless as it had ever been.

They owned the streets. I mean,
they were a force to be reckoned with.

[sean deveney] you had this dignified
older generation of mob bosses,

Being replaced by a younger more
violent generation, like john gotti.

This guy is a violent k*ller.

Come on, you know I don't know
what he was talking about, john.

At the same time,
giuliani comes in with the clear goal...

Are we all set?

...Of bringing down the
heads of the families.

Hopefully, with an organization like
the mafia, we will wear them down.

[andrew kirtzman] in his eyes,
these were bastions of immorality.

And also, they were kind of
stepping stones towards fame.

Rudy wanted to make himself a hero.
He wanted all the attention he could get.

Giuliani comes across like
the hollywood stereotype

Of the tough,
dedicated crime buster.

[deveney] he wanted
power in new york city.

[giuliani] I am tired
of being asked,

"which type of crime is more dangerous:
Violent crime or white collar crime?

Organized crime or
public corruption?"

All of these areas of crime are
dangerous and destructive of our society.

This is a w*r that can be won,

If we do not rest on our accomplishments,
but rather redouble our efforts.

[deveney] rudy giuliani was a bulldog,
and this was his moment.

New york city, the 80s: A
collision of ego and opportunity.

Titans of industry,
crime bosses, law men.

Over the coming decade,
this new elite would redefine

The meaning of success,
the world over.

Battle lines would be drawn,
and limits tested.

[troy] new york had these
larger-than-life personalities,

And that ultimately headed
for a clash.

You have a perfect storm.

[dramatic music playing]