01x03 - 1985-86: Image is Everything

[bunniefuu]

New York City.

[Woman] Happy new year!

At the dawn of the 80s,
it was exploding with opportunity.

[Newsreader] Boom times,
that's what the numbers signal today,

an economy that's
on a roll in this country.

A place to seek money,
power, fame.

Amid the glitz and greed,
five titans seized their moment.

By the mid 80s, they'd figured
out that to get what they wanted,

they just had to go
to the media.

And the media
was more than happy to oblige.

A Wall Street magician
was basking in the spotlight.

[Ivan Boesky] I predict
that this is just the beginning.

Even as his crimes
grew more and more brazen.

[James b Stewart] This was gonna
come crashing down on him.

A real estate mogul
was waist-deep in red ink.

[Natalie byfield] Trump was
particularly good at playing the media.

Even as he convinced the world
it was just the opposite.

Oh Donald, oh Donald,
you are a big deal.

[Emily fox] It is the greatest charade
that Donald Trump ever pulled off.

The hotel queen
was winning over the public.

[Leona Helmsley]
Look at the shape of the head,

you can see the brain just
sits there. I'm very serious.

But behind her castle walls,
she was nothing but wicked.

And as a publicity-hungry
prosecutor plotted

his next heroic
act for the papers...

I mean, it was crazy. Us attorneys
aren't supposed to do that kind of stuff.

A newly christened mob boss
mocked him in those very same pages.

[Newsreader] Outfoxing the foxes in a
big stakes game of cops and robbers

that has made Gotti
kind of a legend.

[George Gabriel] The downside
to the real mobsters is,

who needs this attention?

We're a secret organization.

[Bryan burrough] Even for a crook,
he was a smart guy.

But he made the mistake of
dealing with people who weren't.

[Bill Dowling] She would lash out at you
and I saw it happen to a number of people.

[Tony Schwartz] Was the story that I
told completely, ultimately false? Yes.

These five titans would reshape
the city and the world we live in today.

By the mid 80s,
they'd mastered the art of fame.

But soon they'd learn
that exposure can burn.

[Newsreader] When new yorkers
pick up their tabloids,

the daily news and the post each morning,
they expect the headlines to pack a wallop.

And they do.

For died-in-the-wool
new yorkers,

there's nothing quite like
a good juicy scandal

and in the mid 80s,
the press served up one after another.

[Jonathan mahler] Crime, money, power,
what was happening in this country

created the sort of perfect for tabloid
journalism and for this kind of moment.

[Fox] Every day
it was just a back and forth

between the daily news
and the New York post

and it helped the New York
tabloids have constant fodder,

which they desperately needed
every day.

[Michael musto] The 80s is when the
tabloids really started battling it out.

And the people that emerged certainly
had a knack for working the media.

[Byfield] There was a lot
of attention in the media

to business
and the captains of industry.

They became celebrities.

[Glenn plaskin] This was better
than dynasty.

[Blake carrington] Damn you Alexis,
I'm gonna k*ll you.

Don't!

[Glenn plaskin] This was
real life dynasty.

[Charles bagli] At this point,
developers had

almost supplanted movie
stars in the gossip column

everything they did
was so amusing, so wonderful.

[David cay johnston]
And one of the biggest people

who's benefited from this
is Donald Trump.

He came, he saw, he conquered.
And as the decade pressed on,

the young developer from the outer
boroughs was only growing bolder.

[Johnston] He had built Trump tower,
which made a tremendous amount of money.

He had two casinos that were
throwing cash at him like crazy.

[Michael kruse] But he also
wants more. More, more, more.

He was determined to see his
name splashed across the sky line.

But first, he'd need his name
splashed across the headlines.

The fact that New York was the
media capital of the world allowed him

to create the persona, to create the
celebrity, create the name Donald Trump.

The whole ethos
of Donald Trump's life has been,

"look at me, how rich I am,
look how successful I am."

It's this mythology
that has been built up.

[Newsreader] You cannot walk far
in Manhattan these days

without seeing a piece of real
estate bearing the Trump name.

It looked like
a hugely successful operation.

It was important to maintain that
image because image was reality.

[Newsreader] Donald Trump
has become

one of america's best known
and most successful builders.

[Newsreader] Turning a $40
million real estate business

into a billion dollar empire.

[Letterman] ...Has enough
money to give everyone

in the audience
tonight a million dollars.

[Applause]

[Newsreader] Ok. Ok,
we'll see what kind of mood he's in.

[Laughter and applause]

[Johnston] At the time, bankers were
doing many more loans based on reputation

and so when Donald gets magazine
covers and TV shows about how rich he is

and featuring his helicopter, bankers
feel some sense of confidence in him.

That's why he really wanted
to be on the Forbes 400 list.

[Sue carswell] Back in the 1980s this
John Barron guy was one of his publicists.

He was the go to guy to get,
you know, Trump goods.

[Carswell] And he would say,
"well, you know,"

"I'm just calling for Donald
and I need to tell you this story."

But they were always him.
It was Donald Trump.

It's not like he has
a subtle voice.

Donald Trump as John Barron,
it's just Donald Trump.

[Barbara res] John
Barron is Trump's alter

ego, I guess,
I don't know. It was his alias.

He was doing the press, he was doing
the PR. He was making the phone calls.

[Ken auletta] He just concocted
this whole false reality.

So he goes to Forbes and tells them,
"I have all this money."

And Forbes puts him
on this list.

[Res] I mean, Trump was lying so that he
could move himself up on the Forbes 400,

you know,
talking about his wealth.

Wealthy people don't do that,
they keep that to themselves.

[Tony Schwartz] His life
underneath that persona and sheen

was arguably falling apart
economically.

He was over extended on a lot of his loans,
both in Atlantic city and in New York.

At the same time he was buying
all the accouterments of the wealthy.

The plane, the football team.
His second casino hotel, the castle.

Actually he had lost
a staggering amount of money,

a billion dollars in ten years,

more than any other individual
in the United States.

One of the most amazing things about all of
this was he's also writing and publishing

the art of the deal while he is losing
money on every deal that he was making.

Donald just talk for a minute,
if you would, about the art of the deal

and your business philosophy.

[Donald Trump] Okay. You've
either got it or you don't.

The book the art of the deal was
the first thing that gave Donald Trump

a sort of national audience
and it sold millions of copies.

It was actually written
by Tony Schwartz.

Trump was not involved for even a
minute in any aspect of writing the book.

I wrote the book and miraculously,
he read the book.

How you doing?

From the very first interview
that I did with him for the book,

it was clear that there
was almost a complete inability

to sit still
and answer questions

for more than a few minutes
at a time.

Because I couldn't get from Trump
detail on the deals he was doing,

I would ultimately go to other players
in those deals and try to flesh it out.

What I would discover is that their
version of what happened in the deals

was quite different
than his version.

And his version was always
the most self aggrandizing version

and it was often
an inaccurate version.

So was the story that I told
completely, ultimately false?

Yes. It was.

It was an invented story, invented at a
level far beyond what I recognized even

at the time, but it was never anything
close to the reality of who he was.

People who read the book uncritically
come away thinking, "what a genius he is."

It really put Donald on the map.

[Kathleen] Trump is taking on new
meaning. Tycoon, billionaire, Maverick.

It's written all over New York and Atlantic
city and now it's on the cover of a book.

How important is your
word and your handshake

in a deal? Or does
everything have to be...

Very important.

What? How does it make
the difference?

Handshake and deals are just
to me very important, Kathleen.

This was a man who is portraying
his great wealth,

his enormous success,
his growing businesses,

but the reality was is that
he was losing more money

than I think any American was
at that time.

What do you think people are
gonna get out of it, if they read it?

I mean, what can someone at home
on a $30,000...

It's really a study of life, Kathleen.
How do to it and how to really make life.

How to make life.

How to make life. How to be
with life and how to live with life.

It is the greatest charade that
Donald Trump ever pulled off.

This is a time period
where we're celebrating money,

and who could make
the most of it.

And the media was very complicit
in exposing how brilliant and great

and wonderful these people were,
it didn't have to be true.

And that is on us.

[Michael kruse] For Donald Trump
some of that started to go to his head

and he considered himself
utterly invincible.

He was going to do exactly what he wanted
for as long as he could get away with it.

[Mahler] There had always been
a culture of money in New York.

There had always been
rich people in New York

but there had never been
a Donald Trump before.

There had always been
luxury hotels in New York

but there had never been
a Helmsley palace.

And there had always been
gangsters in New York.

But there had never been
a John Gotti,

a guy who was in the tabloids
all the time and seemingly loved it.

He was the capo
who wanted to be Don.

And he decided he wouldn't wait
for his due, he'd seize it.

[Newsreader] You are looking
at the body of Paul Castellano,

the boss of all bosses
of American organized crime.

[Newsreader] Paul Castellano,
a man authorities say

was the most horrible mafia boss
in the nation,

was shot and k*lled in front of a
New York City restaurant tonight.

[Mahler] Within hours everybody
knew that Gotti was responsible.

We understood what was going on
through FBI informants.

[George Gabriel] k*lling the
boss is like the cardinal rule.

You can't do that.
You don't do that.

[Michel chertoff] It was
a very bold attack.

[Newsreader] Authorities believe the brutal
process of succession is already underway.

[Gabriel] Gotti called a meeting
of all the captains.

And they say, "all right, we're not
sure what happened to Paul. He's dead."

But we're here tonight
to pick another boss.

[Bruce mouw] Everyone
in the room knew who did it.

But they had to play along
with this farce.

Frank decicco stands up.

He says, "I nominate John Gotti to
become boss of the Gambino family."

[Gabriel] The captains that he conspired
with were walking around them all,

basically they were there armed
and if anybody was gonna oppose it,

that was gonna be a problem.

Everybody in the room, okay,
we're good. The family's intact.

Everybody leaves happy.

[Newsreader] John Gotti
allegedly runs an enterprise

as powerful
as many giant corporations.

[Sean deveney] Once he got to power,
Gotti now wanted to be the peacock.

Because he'd spent so long feeling
underappreciated within the Gambino family,

when he gets to the top of it,
it almost wants to make up for lost time.

[Ed McDonald] He became
much more noticeable.

He craved the
attention he was getting.

[Gabriel] All of a sudden he starts wearing
the $2000 suits and the handmade ties.

And he's going out to the
finest restaurants, clubs.

He's attracting
page six attention.

He's living the life.

[Newsreader] Gotti has become
quickly recognizable,

if only for his custom-made suits and his
frequent stops at the stylarama hair salon.

[Vito bollettieri] He's got very good
taste. He likes his hair extremely perfect.

This is against everything
that the mafia has ever done

and the way
it's conducted business.

There's a term in Italian called omerta,
which basically means "silence."

If you're a boss you don't want
anybody to know you're a boss.

And that's why generations of mafia
heads before him hadn't acted that way.

He is handsome, he does wear
$2000 suits. He is well groomed.

Every hair is always in place.
He's quick with one liners.

[McDonald] John Gotti was loved
by the tabloids.

And by the television stations,
they just couldn't get enough of him.

I mean, he was good copy.
And John Gotti fed into this.

People just, people loved watching him,
loved seeing this whole spectacle unfold.

We have here John Gotti's top ten
tax tips. John Gotti's top ten tax tips.

I've met him,
I think he's a wonderful man.

I think he's probably
largely misunderstood.

[Laughter]

Quite frankly there were a lot of people,
you know, they just dismissed

how bad of a guy he was. And
that was the knack that he had.

Number nine: Guys who
escape from the trunk

of your car may be
considered business losses.

[Laughter]

And number eight: No matter how
much he relies on your business,

a funeral director
does not count as a dependent.

[Laughter]

But he was a k*ller. I mean,
this was not a TV show.

Under his leadership,
as with all the bosses, you know,

people who got in the way
wound up getting hurt.

He was ruthless.

Gotti's ex*cuted someone because he
didn't show up when Gotti summoned him.

And he severed his head off.

James mcbratney, Robert dibernardo,
Tommy spinelli, big Gus sclafani

Gotti was just a blood thirsty,
violent criminal.

As the Gambino family head,

it has become a much more violent,
violent institution than it was previously

because Gotti,
that's his outlook,

is if I can't get my way,
I'm just gonna k*ll you.

He was the Jekyll and Hyde
if you will, right,

the guy that the public got
to see and what they didn't see

was the ruthless guy
behind those closed doors

who's ordering hits,
taking over business,

who's doing whatever he wants
in a very strong way.

Downside to the real mobsters
is who needs this attention?

This isn't what we do. We're a secret
organization. But for John, it worked.

If you're going to be that public,
it makes him a target to law enforcement.

And this was a guy who was not careful,
this was a guy who was violent

and this was a guy
who was basically doomed

to take the mafia
and see it implode on itself.

In the mid 80s,
New York was booming

and the biggest winners were
putting on the greatest show on earth.

And yet they faced increasingly
stiff competition

because a revolution in television
was about to change everything.

I want my mtv.

I want my mtv.

[Announcer] Mtv music television

it was the ultimate springboard
for fame.

Transforming local
celebrities from new

York's music scene
into television superstars.

We've gotta look at the ramones
and their triumphant return

to their original starting place
right here in New York City.

[Kurt andersen] Mtv did express a
certain kind of New York inflected cool.

And the density of club
culture and street culture

and graffiti as art
adding to the sense of,

"look at all this innovative, stylish
stuff that is happening in the city."

And in the same way that a lot of New York
city and the kind of cultural excitement

was uptown meets downtown,
mtv kind of expressed that.

[Michael musto] And it was
exciting. I watched it day and night.

And to be a music star at this point,
you couldn't just be a good singer.

You had to have a personality.

You had to be a self made cyndi
lauper. It was perfect for the 80s.

[Lizzy Goodman] There was brilliant art
being made in the form of music videos

by all of the artists that became
the biggest pop stars of this age.

Madonna, who had come from this
underground club world in New York,

understood a visual medium in a
way that artists before her had not.

And mtv had this role
of populating a stage

that was, all of a sudden,
enormous

with like, really weird,
beautiful, odd pop art.

[Darryl mcdaniels] In the 80s, mtv
was able to put hip hop into living rooms

not only across the nation,
across the globe.

[Michael holman] From hip hop's
humble beginnings,

with the reach and the power
of mtv,

you have artists like run-dmc appearing
on them and just changing everything.

You know, with "walk this way"
or "my Adidas."

[Run-dmc rapping]

They knew to take Adidas shoes and make a
song out of it and it becomes a hit record

and kids go to the concert holding
their Adidas shoes up in the air.

Run-dmc exploded,
we was the first to do everything.

First to go gold, first to go platinum,
first on the cover of rolling stone.

First on mtv,
which was huge here in New York City.

[Holman] They become international
sensations. And the world comes to them.

The world comes to hip hop. That's
how big it is. That's how important it is.

It was a brave new world and whether you
were a rock star or a titan of industry,

talent alone
was no longer enough.

It was about selling an image,
and image was everything.

The 80s redefined
what success meant.

You could be a self-made
millionaire if you radiated something.

[Tina brown] They were colorful, they were
rich. They were calling out to be covered.

You know,
this was the beginning of making CEOs

celebrities,
which they really weren't before

before they were just
boring people

who sat behind desks that
you didn't wanna write about.

Now all of a sudden they're posing
with Manhattan skylines behind them,

thrusting themselves
over the desk.

It then became not enough
to be in the fortune 500.

I mean, you wanted to be
the face of your company.

The ultimate example of that
was, of course, Leona Helmsley.

Whether you knew her as the queen
of mean or the queen of the palace,

she was a woman reigning supreme
in a man's world.

And with the limelight firmly fixed on her,
she'd never let you forget it.

Am I comfortable?
I make a living.

[Woman] Leona Helmsley was her
own brilliant public relations person.

[Newsreader] Leona Helmsley,
the emblem of the Helmsley hotel empire.

[Newsreader 2] Leona Helmsley,
the hotel queen billionaire.

[Glenn plaskin] Nobody had ever
taken their name and their face

and turned it into such a personal brand,
much less in real estate.

Trump would follow
in her footsteps, in a sense,

because he would start putting
his name

on Trump tower, Trump palace,
Trump park, Trump everything.

And so she had just the right face,
name, and personality.

The pillows were gonna be perfect. The
rooms were gonna be impeccably clean.

The flowers, the carpet,
everything was gonna be perfect.

[Elaine silverstein] This wealthy,
regal woman was going to be attending

to the details in the hotel
and people believed it.

[Elaine Taylor-Gordon] What could be more
fabulous than being treated like royalty.

But while her guests
may have reveled in her

attention,
others were left frozen in fear.

[Bill Dowling] She had an incredibly
good sense of how to build a bond

with the customers of the hotel
chain. But everyone was scared of Leona.

She would lash out at you and I
saw it happen to a number of people

who had worked
with her for years.

At the restaurant
of the Helmsley palace,

if there was as speck of dust
on a glass or a saucer,

she would call the waiter over, she would
fire him and smash the saucer on the floor.

If service was slow or if the soup
was cold, she would just go nuts.

"Now you're fired, goodbye."

Just like the queen of hearts
in Alice in wonderland.

Off with their head!

Off with your head.

Leona was a petty tyrant,
really.

[Dowling] Leona Helmsley was the
most vain person I've ever known

and this queen stands guard campaign fed
into that like pouring gasoline on a flame.

She was addicted to fame. She
was no longer the immigrant girl,

scrambling up the ladder.

She wanted to step out there
in the gorgeous gown

and have the klieg lights
and be on Harry's arm.

It wasn't long after that that
Leona and Harry bought dunnellen.

This place fed into her queendom
[Laughs] when she bought it.

[Musto] They moved
to greenwich, Connecticut.

But they don't just buy a house
in greenwich, Connecticut.

They buy an estate,
dunnellen hall.

Dunnellen has 28 rooms,
it's on 26 acres of land,

it's 21,000 square feet
of living space.

[Plaskin]It was like a big
English country home

and it all opened out
into this beautiful back lawn.

[Leona Helmsley] I have sheep.
One is Bo, one is peep.

Here Bo. It's your mother.

They are dumb.

They walked the grounds with Mike Wallis.
They talked about their second pool.

[Mike Wallis] And up top?

[Harry Helmsley] On top we're gonna have,
of course, a dance floor.

[Singing] Dance
in an old fashioned way.

It's none of my business,
but, how much?

And she would say,
"I don't know."

I don't know.

Dunnellen was very grand. And she
expected to be treated like a queen.

[Dowling] She wanted
to be the real queen

but there was no similarity
between what she was like in real life

and what the image was that she portrayed.
And that always catches up with people.

She believed that her standards
were justified at dunnellen.

To her they weren't indulgences,
they were necessities.

So this is the world
she created for herself.

And this would be the
world of her downfall.

Plus [laughs] the park Lane,
tplus the Carlton house, g?,

plus the Saint Moritz plus the
Harley hotel. Plus, plus, plus, plus.

Oh you get it.

[Burrough] There was
an acceptance in the 80s

of, "ya make it, you know,
when you show it."

Bling. I mean,
that was kind of a new thing.

[Dowling] Greed will always be with us,
it doesn't disappear.

[Maddrick] But by the mid 80s,
the case against greed,

the cultural restraint
is no longer there.

[Newsreader] A new thinking
gripped Wall Street, a new attitude.

Get yours
while the getting is good.

[Gil Troy] The gospel of wealth of New York
in the 1980s is that if you make money,

make sure to make more and more and
more. 'Cause that's your path to virtue.

And Ivan Boesky was one of the great
symbols of Wall Street greed in the 1980s.

By 1985, the king of arbitrage
was the biggest earner on Wall Street.

But what he wanted
even more was fame.

To achieve it,
he'd need to keep his crimes

hidden while keeping
himself front and center,

a balancing act he could only
manage for so long.

Our guest tonight, Ivan Boesky, wall
street's biggest independent speculator.

The big boys in the business world, which
sparked words like "corporate takeover."

What's behind all of the activity
now? What's it mean to us?

Well, a man who knows a lot about it
is Ivan Boesky. He's one of the big boys.

[Sorkin] He became emblematic of
what Wall Street was in the 1980s,

he was the trader
who had this impossible success.

This is the Horatio alger story,
but just with a lot of zeros and commas.

He was driven in a stretch limo
and he was regal looking, but crude.

[James b Stewart] He always
wanted to call attention to the fact

that he made a lot of money.

For example, he invited a group of people,
including potential clients

to a dinner
at a very expensive restaurant.

Boesky, in front of all these people,
he said he'd order everything on the menu.

[Harvey pitt] Everything
on the menu.

I mean, eating out with Ivan
was an adventure.

[Stewart] I will then taste everything on
the menu and then decide what I want.

He was...

Odd. And he used that to his
advantage. It was part of his mystique.

By now, Boesky had been
the subject of fawning profiles.

He was getting
constant speaking invitations.

It was both a sign of his own
popularity but also the values of the time.

There were wealthy people
that you saw

both on the Wall Street journal
and in people magazine.

This was entirely new. Business
became part of his zeitgeist.

In america,
one of the great things about this nation

is that we can seek profit.
And I'm proud of that.

[Newsreader] Boesky is pushing a
book he's written called merger mania.

[Stewart] He became so famous,
he wrote a book, it was a best seller.

Now, his book purported
to explain how he did this.

We now know, of course, that merger
mania was just part of the cover story.

Nothing in merger mania had anything
to do with his actual investment decisions.

The information that was vital to
him was confidential inside information.

It was ill*gal
to be disseminating.

[Bethany mclean] He's getting inside
information from a variety of sources,

including Marty Siegel and he's using that
to bet on deals and in pretty blatant ways

Boesky and an investment banker named Marty
Siegel were passing cash for information,

getting that information
was steeling form shareholders.

Maybe they tried to convince themselves it
wasn't but that was pure rationalization.

[Mclean] And so, you could look
at that book and say,

"he's got this mammoth ego
that now needs to be fed,"

or you can see it as him trying
to whitewash what he was doing

by putting this public narrative out
there that's very different than what was,

what was actually happening.

But there's really, I guess,
at this point, no number that's enough.

It was incredibly risky
for Boesky to be out bragging

and calling attention
to his success.

Which was only gonna lead
to more scrutiny and questions

but he couldn't resist
the allure of publicity.

What do you think the role of inside
information is in the market today?

I have no way of touching that.
I think it's is a troubling matter

to the interest of those
of us in the industry

that all such kinds of behaviors
be eliminated isn't possible.

People who are committing crimes
often can't resist tipping their hat

and showing that there might be
something going on.

Would it be inside information
if investors such as yourself

found it to your benefit
to start a rumor?

You have to understand that I'm a
professional and one doesn't have the time

to even concern himself with
something as kind of childish as that.

And that's usually
the natural course of events.

It takes a very special kind of
fraudster to keep reining it in.

[Stewart] As Boesky is doing
all of this publicity,

he secretly builds
a network of people

who were funneling
inside information to him

in return for rewards
of one kind of another.

And they were all
enriching themselves illegally.

You could argue that people always
get careless as their fraud goes on longer.

They get greedier
and they get more reckless.

It's almost akin
to eating potato chips.

The more potato chips you eat,
the more you want.

Ivan was a smart guy. Even
for a crook he was a smart guy.

But he made the mistake of
dealing with people who weren't.

Dennis Levine
would be exhibit a.

[Denis Levine] I
live for the high of

making those trades,
of doing the next deal.

Dennis Levine was a schmuck.

Everybody knew a Dennis Levine.

A schmucky kid who came here and cut
corners to be somebody. He was such a putz.

Dennis Levine stumbled into the
world of mergers and acquisitions.

He was hired
by drexel Burnham lambert

and trumpeted as their new investment
banking star who'd be based in New York

to compliment the milken
operation on the west coast.

Drexel has changed the face
of American finance

and this one man did it
almost single handedly.

It was really drexel, Burnham,
and particularly Michael milken,

who used junk bonds to fuel the takeover
booms, to finance corporate raiders.

To shake up corporate america in a
way that it had never confronted before.

Drexel Burnham lambert was
the center of the information flow.

[Newsreader] Dennis Levine impressed
colleagues as being very well wired

to the other investment banking
firms and to Wall Street's rumor mills

Dennis Levine had no recognizable
banking skills other than his ability to,

as they used to call it,
work the phones.

He had an extra long cord so
he could wander around the office

while holding the phone
and talking at the same time.

And so it was very,
very lucrative for him.

It was like a cash register
going off.

[Burrough] Everybody knew
a Dennis Levine.

The guy at the next desk that
you didn't like that talked too loud

about his new summer house
or his new boat.

That was Dennis Levine and he was the
template for the sordid young new yorker

who would do anything
to be anything.

[Stewart ]Boesky was a dream
for somebody like Levine.

So it was naturally
someone that Levine

would want to cultivate
a relationship with.

And a little bit like Boesky,
he managed to put together a ring of people

who fed him inside information.

It was very valuable for both Levine
and Boesky to have a network of sources

so that these tips never came
from one identifiable source.

They had
a very symbiotic relationship.

And they hammered out a very
specific profit-sharing agreement.

If Levine was the source
of a investment by Boesky,

he got 5% of the profits.

If he only gave him additional
information about something

that Boesky had already invested in,
he got 1% of the profits.

They both knew what was going
on. They were playing the game.

They were both
blatantly violating the law.

What Ivan Boesky did
was white line crime.

There ain't no doubt
that this was a crime

and they stupidly thought
they could not get caught.

Dennis Levine was cataclysmic for Boesky.
This was gonna come crashing down on him.

There is no quick fix
fwith no end in sight.. Anc

how available is it? Well,
today three public

officials took to the
streets to find out.

Ellen fleysher
watched the results.

[Ellen fleysher] You could
call it a mixed metaphor,

the pinstriped
trousers worn by the us

attorney topped by a
leather hells angels vest.

The vest supplied by the
drug enforcement administration

as Rudolph giuliani,
and senator alfonse d'amato,

and Benjamin baird,
chairman of the us parole commission,

went shopping for crack
in Washington heights.

I mean, it was crazy. I mean,
giuliani dressed as a hells angel.

Us attorney's aren't supposed
to do that kind of stuff.

For a hard driving prosecutor in the
dawn of his career, the rules were simple.

Be bold, be unapologetic, and keep
everyone watching by any means necessary.

[Rudolph giuliani] People are
not getting adequate sentences

to really deter this kind of activity,
this is a terrible, terrible emergency.

I mean, it just showed how
kind of singular giuliani was,

as kind of part law man,
part tabloid figure.

[Michael winerip] What he lacked in natural
charm, he sort of made up for in chutzpah.

He took on
the entire mob leadership.

There was nothing about giuliani
that was not extraordinarily ambitious.

The commission case goes to trial
and Rudy wins, much to his credit.

He delivered on his promise,
which is rare in life.

[Newsreader] At the age of 40,
he is described by friend and foe alike

as hard working, dynamic,
good at what he does,

and to that list his detractors
add: Publicity hound.

[Troy] Rudy giuliani in the


But he doesn't do it in
traditional American ways, silently.

He does it
in front of the camera.

He does it with lights and
camera and action and microphone.

[Newsreader] We have come to
know the face of Rudolph giuliani,

a steady presence in the
morning papers and evening news.

More than any other us attorney
for the southern district of New York,

giuliani has sown himself
into the fabric of this city.

[Winerip] He talked about it
in almost a philosophical way,

that I wanna publicize
the great work of our

office. But that's not
what was driving him.

What was driving him was what
Rudy was doing and his relentless climb.

It's rumored a lot that
you've got political ambitions.

Right. I hear it all the time.
[Laughs]

Right. [Laughs] So is true?

No, it's not true. I mean...

The reason I have difficult
in completely eliminating

all speculation about it is that I will
not say I will never in my entire life

run for public office because
I don't know the answer to that.

[McDonald] I don't think there's any
question that Rudy giuliani used his office

to generate publicity for himself so that
he could run for mayor, run for president,

become the lawyer for the
president of the United States. [Laughs]

He would make a name for himself
prosecuting organized crime.

Make a name for himself in
prosecuting some public corruption

in the city of New York.

After that
he went to Wall Street.

[Randy mastro] Back in the 80s
there was insider trading.

Back in the 80s
there were junk bonds.

Back in the 80s there were
some offenses on Wall Street

that cried out for a prosecution. Yet,
prosecutions of Wall Street

and white collar crime had not
been common prior to this time.

[Kirtzman] You have to remember
that these Wall Street titans,

they were kind of heroes
to many Americans.

They embodied American
success and ingenuity

and I don't think
giuliani saw that at all.

I mean, he found
the excess repugnant

and he also saw that
as another vehicle towards fame.

[Andrew Ross sorkin] This was
his moment to make his name

as the lead prosecutor
in New York

and he saw this
as an opportunity

not just to find justice,
but I think, in some ways,

to find justice for himself,
which was power.

What started as a surge of opportunity
had transformed into a zeitgeist

fueled by money, power and fame.

Tycoons, pop icons,
and desperados alike were celebrated

by a fawning public regardless of
how they achieved their fortunes.

Americans had bought into a new
image of success, hook, line, and sinker.

And fantasized about living
that way too, some day.

[Announcer] It's another dazzling
lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Meet the stars of show business
and big business.

Discover how life's winner live,
love, and spend their fortunes.

Look. America has always been
a country of income inequality.

But in previous generations,
those of great wealth had the taste

to hide away
and not display themselves.

The 80s really was one of the first
times where a lot of the nouveau riche

felt comfortable displaying that
wealth. It was sordid. It was seamy.

Unless, of course,
you wanted to do it yourself.

Now they're living in New York

where it's so clear who are the masters
of the universe but to make it even worse,

to make it even more shakespearean,
Ivan Boesky goes to Berkeley.

He gives a commencement address.
And he says, "greed can be healthy."

[Boesky] I urge you, as a part
of your ambitions, seek wealth.

[Cheering and applause]

And he gave this speech that
essentially said, "greed is good."

And of course the speech is enshrined in
the movie Wall Street by Michael Douglas.

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

Greed is right. Greed works.

Does anyone disagree with that?
No.

To someone of my generation who
knew of Berkeley as a hot bed of, you know,

left wing student unrest, it was
fascinating that students at Berkeley

voted to have Ivan Boesky
be their commencement speaker.

And that... it was
the one line in the

entire speech that drew
spontaneous applause.

But do it in a virtuous
and honest way.

[Burrough] There was
a new generation

that desperately needed
to hear that this was ok.

They were doing things that their
mothers and fathers hadn't done.

Maybe their mothers and fathers had been
working on the line at gm or Campbell soup

and here they were
making nothing,

just making millions of dollars
trading stocks and bonds.

It's all right.

[Laughter and cheering]

And to have someone
like Boesky say,

"it's ok, you're doing good.
You're pursuing a full life."

You know, I think there is a generation
that really wanted to hear that message.

Fame. Fortune. Adoration.

For an insecure outsider
who'd conned his way to the top,

it was everything
he'd always wanted.

But he was flying too close
to the sun.

This has got a dark side because
it ain't possible to dial it back.

Exposure can burn.

[Newsreader] Dennis Levine,
a young investment banker,

was arrested and charged
with insider trading.

[Newsreader] Investment
banker Dennis Levine

collected $12.5
million in ill*gal profits

[Dennis Levine] I
realize I've committed

very serious crimes,
for which I'm very sorry

[newsreader] Levine
has pleaded guilty and will

turn over almost all
of his estimated wealth.

The man responsible for
that arrest is Rudolph giuliani,

us attorney for the
southern district of New York.

Well, he allegedly obtained
information about mergers

that would take place in the
future or other types of information

that would have the effect of
driving up the price of the stock

and bought large blocks
of that stock.

[Interviewer] Was anyone else
involved in this at all? Knowingly?

Yes. At this point, though,
I can't identify anyone else.

[Journalists] Mr. Boesky,
any comment? Any comment, Mr. Boesky?

So many things are too good
to be true in retrospect, right?

If everybody's making fortunes
and the champagne is flowing,

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

[Dramatic music playing]