If there are two Tonys in The Sopranos, there are also two crime-related organizations whose activities run through the series. One, of course, is the Mafia; the other is the FBI, the Mafia’s Other. The depiction of the FBI in The Sopranos is rife with significance, as when their constant efforts to gather information about Tony and his criminal associates potentially serve as commentary on the growing level of surveillance we are all subject to in modern American society, especially in the era after September 11, 2001. Perhaps more importantly, though, the series’ rather irreverent view of the FBI dramatizes the crisis in contemporary authority that is so central to the world of The Sopranos, while the difficulty that the FBI has in making any sense of the information it gathers through its surveillance activities serves as an embodiment of the embattled status of interpretation that runs throughout the series.
The FBI has functioned as the Other to gangsters in American popular culture for quite some time, and in more ways than one. For example, the first FBI movie, G Men, was released in 1935, the same year that the Federal Bureau of Investigation came into being under its current name, though it had essentially operated in its modern form since 1924, when J. Edgar Hoover became director of what was then simply called the Bureau of Investigation. G Men partly functioned as a promotional piece for the FBI, but, more than anything, it was intended to provide an answer to the spate of gangster films that had appeared in the early 1930s, films that many felt glamorized and made heroes of the gangsters who were featured in them. In response, G Men featured gangsters as unlikeable thugs opposed by the virtuous and heroic “G Men” men of the FBI. Interestingly, the most important FBI agent in the film is one James “Brick” Davis, who just happens to be played by James Cagney—in what appears to be a direct response to the popularity of Cagney as gangster Tom Powers in Public Enemy (1931), one of Tony Soprano’s favorite gangster films. G Men was re-released in 1949 as part of the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the modern FBI (i.e., of Hoover’s tenure as director), in a version that included a brief prologue showing the film being screened for a roomful of young FBI agents in order to teach them about the bureau’s history.
The re-release, then, was intended even more clearly as a promotion for the FBI, and can be seen as part of Hollywood’s effort at the time to demonstrate its loyalty to the United States and to combat suspicions that the film industry had been infiltrated and was being unduly influenced by communists and communist sympathizers. Hoover firmly believed that building trust in his organization through the development of a positive public image could greatly enhance the effectiveness of the bureau in fighting crime, so this effort was very much in line with his own goals.[1] By the 1950s, films such as Walk East on Beacon! (1952) had become little more than pro-FBI, anticommunist propaganda, clearly designed to curry favor with Hoover. On the other hand, Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953) drew the ire of Hoover when its producers refused to make the changes he demanded after previewing the film, which he felt was unflattering to the FBI and its anticommunism campaign. Meanwhile, the FBI came in for criticism because many felt Hoover’s fanatical devotion to fighting communism detracted from the bureau’s efforts to fight organized crime, allowing the Mafia to thrive as it never had before—a claim that is probably part of the background to the vague recollection of the gangsters of The Sopranos that the 1950s constituted a golden era for their business.[2]
Nevertheless, by the time of the release of Warner Bros.’ The FBI Story in 1959 (with Hoover serving as a consultant on the film), Hoover’s efforts to craft a public image of the FBI as a sleek, modern organization staffed by virtuous and efficient agents had been largely successful. This film essentially tells the history of the FBI (from an extremely flattering perspective); it may have gained its greatest importance, however, from the fact that it was one of the inspirations for the Warner-produced television series The F.B.I., which ran from 1965 until 1974, with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in the lead role of Inspector Lewis Erskine. This popular series, which featured stories inspired by actual FBI cases, did as much as anything to solidify the positive image of the FBI that Hoover had cultivated and nurtured until his death in 1972.
That image largely remained in place until the 1990s, even though a series of revelations about illegal or unethical activities by the bureau, especially in relation to the oppositional political movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, chipped away at the pristine reputation Hoover had worked so hard to establish. In 1991, The Silence of the Lambs made Anthony Hopkins’ criminal genius Hannibal Lecter one of the most compelling villains in American film history, but it also cast a very sympathetic light on the efforts of young FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jody Foster) to make use of Lecter’s talents. The 1990s, however, would be most notable for the representation of the FBI on television, rather than on film. FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was the central character of David Lynch’s groundbreaking Twin Peaks (1990–1991); though his unconventional investigative techniques sometimes put him at odds with the FBI establishment, Cooper was a generally positive figure, even if the overall texture of this genuinely strange (and quintessentially postmodern) series tended to challenge the scientific, authoritative worldview on which the reputation of the FBI had long been built.
A similar, and even more compelling, challenge would be mounted soon afterward in the form of The X-Files (1993–2002). Here, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) would become perhaps the best-known FBI agents since Hoover himself. However, the swirl of conspiracies and counter-conspiracies that lay at the heart of this important series often cast the bureaucracy of the FBI in a highly negative light, with Mulder and Scully often having to battle the FBI establishment almost as much as they battled aliens, monsters, and psychopaths.
By the time The Sopranos debuted at the beginning of 1999, then, the FBI was still one of the best-known institutions in the United States, though its long-term reputation for excellence was becoming a bit shaky—both in popular culture and in reality. The bureau had been directed since 1993 by Louis Freeh, who had risen to prominence for his role in the “Pizza Connection” case, one of several cases in the 1980s in which the government struck important blows against organized crime. However, Freeh’s tenure as FBI director was fraught with controversy, and he eventually resigned from the post in June 2001, shortly after the conclusion of the third season of The Sopranos and only months before the 9/11 bombings seriously called into question the effectiveness of the FBI and related organizations in protecting the United States against terrorism.
The embattled situation of the FBI at the turn of the millennium was very much congruent with the air of a crisis in authority that is so central to the texture of The Sopranos. Indeed, by the time the series had been completed, the once-glorious reputation of the bureau had largely eroded.[3] It should come as no surprise, then, that the portrayal of the FBI in the series is less than entirely flattering. In some cases, for example, the efforts of the bureau to gather evidence against Tony Soprano and other organized crime figures border on the comically inept. In other cases, the FBI agents seeking to take down these mob figures seem as ruthless and unscrupulous as the mobsters themselves. At the same time, just as The Sopranos complicates our view of gangsters by showing them as real people with homes and families and lives apart from the mob, so too does it remind us that the FBI agents charged with tracking them down are human beings with private lives of their own.
In the early days of the FBI, Director Hoover preferred to rely on informants for inside information and resisted sending FBI agents undercover for fear that they might be corrupted by the environments into which they were being sent. By the time of The Sopranos, however, it was common practice to employ both of these methods. One of the key gangster films in the years leading into the production of The Sopranos was Donnie Brasco (1997), based on the real-life undercover activities of FBI agent Joseph Pistone (played in the film by Johnny Depp), who posed as gangster Donnie Brasco from 1976 to 1981, infiltrating New York’s Bonanno crime family. In The Sopranos there is no such direct infiltration, though there is one case of an FBI agent who works undercover to gather information when a female agent, Deborah Ciccerone-Waldrup (Lola Glaudini) is asked to pose as one “Danielle Ciccolella” and to befriend Adriana La Cerva in order to gain information about Adriana’s life with Christopher Moltisanti.[4] Ciccerone-Waldrup’s association with the relatively innocent Adriana ultimately leads to the latter’s doom, so that this motif suggests the way in which the FBI is willing to destroy lives in order to achieve its objectives.[5] Ciccerone-Waldrup is also married (to another FBI agent) and has a baby, and the brief scene of her at home with her husband and child in episode 4.1 (“For All Debts Public and Private,” September 15, 2002)—which includes a call from her mother just as she is putting on her war paint in preparation for an undercover outing with Adriana—provides one of the strongest reminders we have in the series that FBI agents are just people doing a job. Thus, Douglas Howard notes that Tony Soprano and Dwight Harris (Matt Servitto), the main FBI agent investigating Tony, “do not seem like adversaries,” but “more like rival businessmen . . . working different sides of the street in the same industry. . . . They are both just doing their jobs” (165).
It’s just a business, as Tony would say, a point that is made most strongly and directly in episode 2.11 (“House Arrest,” March 26, 2000) when Tony consults his lawyer, Neil Mink (David Margulies), about the ongoing FBI investigation into his affairs. Mink explains to Tony that “the Feds are a business, Anthony. Millions of tax dollars invested in watching your ass. Sooner or later they’re gonna want a return on that investment.” On the other hand, the ongoing efforts of the FBI to map out the organization of the various crime families they are investigating sometimes seem more like a board game than a business, especially as it seldom seems to lead to any sort of practical results. In fact, the seemingly inordinate amount of time the FBI spends trying to determine the exact administrative structure of the crime families they are investigating suggests that the FBI, so caught up in bureaucratic tangles of its own, is perhaps overly concerned with bureaucracy and assumes that organized crime must be the same.
The main investigative technique employed by the FBI in The Sopranos is to pressure members of the mob into providing evidence (and, eventually, testimony) against their own organizations. However, the coercive tactics the bureau uses in doing so border on outright extortion, and are not all that different from those that might be employed by the mob itself. In the early part of the series, these efforts focus on longtime trusted Soprano associate Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, who has been arrested on heroin-trafficking charges and thus begins supplying information in order to try to avoid the substantial prison term that might be associated with those charges. Bonpensiero thus embodies the real historical fact that the imposition of increased minimum sentences for drug-trafficking charges in the 1980s struck significant blows against organized crime by encouraging numerous mobsters to turn state’s evidence in order to avoid those longer prison terms.
The somewhat friendly relationship that evolves between Bonpensiero and his FBI handler, Skip Lipari, also contributes to the sense in the series that the line between the FBI and the Mafia is a fine one. Indeed, in episode 2.12 (“The Knight in White Satin Armor,” April 2, 2000), Lipari complains that Bonpensiero can’t decide whether he wants to be loyal to Tony or whether he wants to be a G-man dedicated to busting the mob. Among other things, the fact that Bonpensiero seems attracted to the romantic notion of being a gang-busting G-man shows just how effective American popular culture has been in perpetuating that particular image of FBI activity. At the same time, Bonpensiero ultimately seems to try to feed Lipari as little useful information as he can to get by; however, when the chips are down, Lipari is not above applying pressure when he feels that Bonpensiero is being less than fully cooperative. Eventually, he coerces Bonpensiero into wearing a wire so that his conversations with Tony and others can be monitored and recorded, thus pushing the gangster toward the ultimate form of perfidy by the values of the mob, despite his loyalty to and fondness for Tony, for whom he has long served as a sort of mentor.
One sign of a breakdown in the mob is the seeming ease with which the FBI is able to turn mobsters into informants in the series. However, one sign that the FBI might be less than the coldly efficient machine Hoover had portrayed it as being is that the mob informants employed by the bureau are often detected and quickly disposed of—without the FBI ever quite being able to figure out what happened. Thus, it becomes clear to Tony fairly early on that Bonpensiero is informing to the FBI, despite the fact that Bonpensiero is a trusted and beloved member of his crew—and despite the fact that Tony wants so badly to believe that his old friend is loyal. Moreover, almost as if to add insult to injury, when the gangsters of the series do away with one of their own after discovering his activities as an informant, they typically explain the disappearance of that individual by claiming (as they do with Bonpensiero) that they have gone into the witness protection program, so much so that this explanation becomes a sort of running joke in the series.
The plot strand involving Bonpensiero’s collaboration with the FBI, which dominates much of the action of the second season, leads to his eventual execution-style shooting by Tony, Sil, and Paulie in episode 2.13 (“Funhouse,” April 9, 2000). Bonpensiero’s body is then dumped in the ocean, clearly referring back to his appearance in the pilot episode, in which he corrects Christopher’s mangled reference to Luca Brasi’s “sleeping with the fishes” in The Godfather. The motif then continues as Bonpensiero’s memory (with his “ghost” often appearing in the form of a fish) haunts Tony through the remainder of the series. In fact, Bonpensiero’s fate is a sad one both for Tony and for viewers, and the pressure put on him by the FBI is one of the clearest indications in the series of the ruthlessness with which the FBI is willing to pursue its goals. In the morally complex world of The Sopranos, there is no clear opposition between good guys and bad guys; in fact, there are few good guys at all, at least not in any clear and absolute sense.
The end of the Bonpensiero plot thread did not, however, remove the FBI from a central role in the events of The Sopranos. In fact, season 3 opens with a renewed focus on the bureau, as episode 3.1 (“Mr. Ruggerio’s Neighborhood,” March 4, 2001) employs the surprise strategy of being told largely from the point of view of the FBI, creating a sort of defamiliarized vision of Tony and his two families from a new and estranging perspective. This strategy also helps to create a sense that the FBI is finally beginning to move in on Tony, mobilizing vast resources to keep him under surveillance, including planting a bug in his house. Fortunately for Tony (but unfortunately for the FBI), the agents involved in this process appear to be rather bumbling and inept, even comical in their efforts.[6] This comical aspect to their endeavors is reinforced when Henry Mancini’s well-known “Peter Gunn Theme” plays as the FBI watches Carmela and Meadow to make sure they don’t come home during the planting of the bug there, giving their efforts a theatrical air, as if they are simply playing at being FBI agents. In short, like everyone else in the postmodern world of The Sopranos, their actions are a performance, mediated through their own notions of what FBI agents are supposed to be like, notions that are themselves derived largely from film and television representations of FBI agents. Then the music switches to the 1983 Police classic, “Every Breath You Take,” the lyrics (dominated by the refrain “I’ll be watching you”) clearly providing a bridge between Big Brother–style official surveillance and voyeuristic romantic obsession. Meanwhile, this parallel between surveillance and voyeurism is made even more clear when the agents involved in the investigation spend much of their time ogling Adriana rather than keeping their minds on the business at hand. In the end, the agents finally manage to plant a bugged lamp in the Sopranos’ basement, which might be regarded as a major coup for them, given that Tony often conducts business-related conversations in the basement. The only problem is that the lamp will become a running gag as it moves around to various locations in the house, initially confusing the FBI listeners. By episode 3.5 (“Another Toothpick,” March 25, 2001), Meadow takes it out of the house altogether to use at Columbia, leading the FBI melodramatically to declare that “the Tony Soprano wiretap has been neutralized.”
The sixth and final season of The Sopranos again begins with a focus on the FBI, as Agent Harris and his new partner, Agent Ron Goddard (Michael Kelly), ride in a car and Goddard (in what might be taken as a comment on most forms of American commercial television) quotes P. T. Barnum’s famous dictum to the effect that “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” Then Harris (in what might also be taken as a similar bit of TV criticism) has to stop the car to throw up. It turns out, however, that Harris has a more direct reason to vomit—he has a parasite that he picked up in Pakistan, where he was sent for six months as part of his new assignment to fight terrorism. This new assignment takes Harris’s role in the series in a new direction, while at the same time making important points about the impact of the War on Terror on American society, suggesting (among other things) that the resources devoted to fighting terrorism since 9/11 have been largely diverted from other assignments and that the government is now so focused on fighting terrorism that it has decreased its efforts in areas such as fighting organized crime.
We have known Agent Harris since the first season of The Sopranos, when he was identified as the agent in charge of investigating the organized crime activities of which Tony Soprano and his family are a key part. Through most of his appearances in the series he remains on the margins of the show and seems something of a nonentity, though his appearance in a total of twenty-four episodes does make him a fairly consistent presence. However, the very fact that he remains involved in the series for so long brings a certain continuity to the activities of the FBI in the show and tends to make him function as a sort of embodiment of the bureau, providing a face to what might have otherwise have seemed a largely impersonal operation. In the sixth season, in fact, Harris becomes a more prominent presence in the series (and even something of an ally of Tony), staying involved into the very last episode.
Agent Harris first appears in episode 1.8 (“The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti,” February 28, 1999), leading a group of agents who have come to the Soprano home with a warrant that allows them to search the premises seeking incriminating evidence. Harris gets off to a relatively positive start and shows a certain sensitivity in trying to avoid traumatizing the Soprano family. When Tony complains at dinner that night about the behavior of the agents, Carmela notes that Harris didn’t seem to be so bad, but Tony is suspicious of Harris’s polite conduct. “He was the biggest sneak out of all of them,” Tony declares. “It was all a part of his little act.”
Given Tony’s distrust of Harris, it is no surprise that he spurns Harris’s efforts a few episodes later—in episode 1.12 (“Isabella,” March 28, 1999)—to get him to turn state’s evidence for his own protection in light of the recent attempt on his life (an attempt that had been ordered by Uncle Junior and tacitly approved by his own mother). As time goes forward, though, Harris does seem a reasonably decent sort, especially in comparison with most of the other FBI agents we meet in the series.
The parasite (another of those motifs in The Sopranos that invites, but doesn’t especially repay, careful allegorical interpretation) that afflicts Harris in the first episode of the sixth season will continue to plague him throughout the rest of the series. It does not, however, prevent him from starting to hang out at Satriale’s Pork Store eating their sandwiches, which seems a decidedly questionable move for anyone with digestive difficulties of any kind. On the other hand, when Christopher, in episode 6.2 (“Join the Club,” March 19, 2006), runs into Harris and Goddard there and chidingly asks him about the parasite he picked up in “Diarrheastan,” Harris suggests that the sandwiches just might be the cure. Harris asks about Tony (who is still recuperating after having been mistakenly shot by his Uncle Junior), and in a way that suggests at least a modicum of genuine concern. In response, Christopher suggests that Harris only comes to the neighborhood because he misses Tony and the gang, especially as his new job must be so depressing. Christopher then makes a racist joke about someone reporting a truckload of towels missing (suggesting that Arabs all wear towels on their head). Goddard responds with absolute seriousness (and more than a little defensiveness), noting that “We actually spend a little more of our time trying to interdict the financial networks that fund the terror cells worldwide.” Harris then notes that some of the activities that are being used to fund terrorism involve areas (such as truck hijacking or narcotics) into which Christopher might have some insight. He tells Christopher, “You’d be helping a lot if you picked up a phone.” When Christopher responds that he wouldn’t know a terrorist if one bit him on the ass, Harris responds that “you knew Matush Gia.” Christopher assures Harris that he knew nothing about Matush’s politics and that “I take that terrorism shit seriously. And Tony? Don’t even get him started.”
Matush, incidentally, is another of the many loose threads that the FBI is unable to tie together in the course of their work in the series. We first meet him in episode 3.9 (“The Telltale Moozadell,” April 22, 2001), in which he seems to be named “Matush Giamona” (Nick Tarabay) and is identified as a friend of Jackie Aprile Jr. and as possibly Israeli. Matush is caught dealing in the bathroom at the Crazy Horse, the new music club that Christopher has helped set up for Adriana to run to give her something to do. Furio Giunta and his men throw Matush out of the club, then severely beat him when he later returns to deal drugs outside the club. Matush will later be important in episode 5.12 (“Long Term Parking,” May 23, 2004) when he murders—with help of a Muslim drug dealer named Kamal (Homie Daroodian)—one of his own disgruntled customers in the backroom of the Crazy Horse, then coerces Adriana into helping him cover up the crime. The FBI, though, has the club under tight surveillance and uses the information they gain about her participation in the murder cover-up to strong-arm her into cooperating with them. Meanwhile, the association with Kamal might be one reason the FBI suspects Matush of being involved in terrorist activities, though, as usual, they are unable to come to any firm conclusions about his involvement.
Interestingly enough, Christopher apparently goes straight from the meeting with Harris to the Bada Bing!, where he encounters Ahmed (Taleb Adleh) and Muhammad (Donnie Keshawarz), two young Arab Muslims who seem to operate on the fringes of organized crime and with whom Christopher is clearly acquainted. They are, in fact, among a number of young criminals that Christopher seems to help break into organized crime in the course of the series. Seeing them drinking at the bar while watching strippers (they are apparently rather lax Muslims), Christopher quips (with casual racism), “You guys here again? You oughtta put up a tent on this fuckin’ bar.”[7]
Ahmed and Muhammad (whose names are so stereotypically Arab that their naming almost seems like a sort of sly joke, despite the fact that their behavior often busts stereotypes about Muslims) next appear in episode 6.5 (“Mr. and Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request . . . ,” April 9, 2006), where they again meet with Christopher at the Bada Bing!. He again greets them with a mildly racist remark: “Ho! Where are the rest of the forty thieves?” This time, though, they come to him with a purpose, bearing payment for some credit card numbers and security codes that Christopher has stolen from the Internet. Christopher then becomes exasperated when the two Arabs don’t understand his reference to an old American Express commercial, clearly regarding them as hopelessly primitive and ignorant. They ignore the jibe, as always, and are quite deferential, offering a box of dates as a gift for the recovering Tony.
Then things take a potentially darker turn when Ahmed asks Christopher if he knows where they can acquire a couple of “TEC-9 semi-automatics, extended magazines,” weapons that were at the time on the list of firearms banned in the United States by the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Christopher seems surprised that they might need such firepower, but Muhammad assures him (not entirely convincingly) that it has to do with “a family problem. My former brother-in-law, actually,” without providing any further details.
Ahmed and Muhammad continue their association with Christopher and his henchman Murmur in the credit card scheme over the next several episodes. In the next episode, 6.6 (“Live Free or Die,” April 16, 2006), Meadow complains that the Bush administration is using 9/11 as an excuse to erode our civil liberties. Tony, despite his position outside the law, is far from questioning the legitimacy of the War on Terror or from wondering if the Patriot Act might have ulterior motivations behind it. But all the talk about terrorism makes him a bit nervous. Growing concerned, Tony asks Christopher about “those two Arabs, with the credit cards”: “Do you think there’s a chance they could be, I don’t know . . . Al-Qaedas?” Christopher admits that it once crossed his mind, and that the two seem to be “gun nuts.” But he has concluded that the two are far too Westernized and secularized to be Muslim extremists. Moreover, he informs Tony that Muhammad’s brother is a “government interrogator in Lebanon . . . or Syria.” Muhummad and his girlfriend even have a dog, Christopher notes, so how Muslim could they be? Tony seems unconvinced, though, and Christopher himself seems to be rethinking the matter.
In the next episode—6.7 (“Luxury Lounge,” April 23, 2006)—Ahmed and Muhammad decline Murmur’s offer (while they again sit at the bar at the Bada Bing!) to supply actual plastic cards and explain that they do “Internet only,” but still with no other explanation of what they are up to. In episode 6.12 (“Kaisha,” June 4, 2006) they are again spotted at their favorite spot (the bar at the Bing) as Tony walks by and they wish him a merry Christmas, continuing both their tendency to kiss up to the mob boss and to act in ways that deviate from Muslim stereotypes. In this same episode tensions are continuing to mount between Tony and Phil Leotardo, when the latter is suddenly stricken with a heart attack. While he is recuperating in the hospital (a setting in which gangsters apparently spend an inordinate amount of time), Tony meets with Harris as the other sits at one of the tables in Satriale’s. “So how’s the war on terror?” asks Tony, taking a seat across from Harris. “Christmas is always potentially our busy season,” replies Harris, not only linking his antiterrorism work to conventional business activities but also echoing one of Tony’s own favorite expressions—and one that Harris might well be aware of from his earlier surveillance of Tony’s activities, adding a special note of irony to this exchange. In any case, Harris warns Tony that he is “not very popular in Brooklyn right now” and that “someone close to you may be in danger.” Tony asks whether Harris has anyone specific in mind, and Harris responds that “all they know is it’s under serious discussion at top levels.”
The only time in the series that we see Ahmed and Muhammad outside the Bing or associating with any other Muslims occurs in episode 6.16 (“Chasing It,” April 29, 2007) when Tony rides in a car along the street and sees them chatting with a man and his son (probably Pakistani), then walking past some other Muslims that they seem to know. Tony then puts two and two together and seems to take the fact that Ahmed and Muhammad are seen with other Muslims as evidence that they might be involved in terrorist activities—even though we see no real evidence of this anywhere in the series. In episode 6.19 (“The Second Coming,” May 20, 2007), Harris (who now complains that he can’t eat at Satriale’s because of his parasite) and Goddard show Tony pictures of Ahmed and Muhammad, this time with Muhammad wearing a traditional Saudi Ghutrah. Tony, with his suspicions already raised about the two, is clearly curious, but Harris and Goddard seem to know little more than he does. Goddard says they might be involved in “financing maybe,” while Harris notes that “I’m not even sure we even still have them in the country.” The mighty FBI seems completely unable to unravel the activities even of small-time operators like Ahmed and Muhammad—and viewers of The Sopranos are in pretty much the same boat.
We learn in the very next episode that Harris apparently works very hard at his antiterrorism assignment, even if he seems to get few results. In episode 6.20 (“Blue Comet,” June 3, 2007), Harris (still seeming to have trouble deciding about the status of his stomach) is chowing down on one of his favorite sandwiches at Satriale’s when Tony spots him and asks him how the “anti-terror” is going, repeating his favorite conversation-starter. “Great,” says Harris, “if you don’t like sleeping, eating, or seeing your kids.” But when Tony asks what has become of Ahmed and Muhammad, who seem to have disappeared (he wonders if they are “in Jordan, gettin’ their balls zapped”), Harris claims not to know whether they are actually involved in terrorism: “For all we know they may be harmless pistachio salesmen.” Tony thinks Harris is being evasive and leaves in a huff. After thinking for a moment, Harris follows Tony out onto the street and tells him he appreciates the information Tony gave him about the two Arabs. In return, he delivers some information of his own: “Remember that thing I told you about that was supposed to happen about a year ago? Your problem . . . with Brooklyn? It’s on again, possibly. You. Maybe people close to you. If it was real solid you would have been warned officially by the Newark office. But my colleague in Brooklyn . . . the one with the collaborator. The snitch is implying the wheels have already been set in motion.” Tony essentially shrugs off the information (“Implyin’,” he says), but he clearly seems worried.
By the time of the next (and final) episode, Tony, hoping to get information about Phil Leotardo in return, offers Harris information about a bank where Ahmed and Muhammad have an account. Harris declines to supply information about Leotardo in return. Later in the episode, however, Harris (who had been shown squabbling on the phone with his wife in “Blue Comet”) is further humanized when he is shown in a motel room in the aftermath of what appears to be an assignation with a female agent—placing him in the kind of situation in which one might expect to find Tony and thus blurring the line between gangster and G-Man. His partner in crime, as it were, is not too happy, though when she emerges, dressing, from the bathroom to discover Harris (having had a change of heart) on the phone to Tony, delivering the tip that will ultimately allow Tony and his crew to locate (and kill) Leotardo.
With Harris now assigned to the War on Terror instead of the War on Crime, it is easier for him and Tony to be on the same side, but it also seems to be the case that they have developed a grudging respect for one another over the years. Harris also, as it turns out, has a special long-time grudge against Leotardo (who once apparently tried to set up one of Harris’s female agents to be beaten and raped), and we later see that he is pleased to get word of Leotardo’s murder. Still, the tip that leads to Leotardo’s death is the culmination of a movement throughout this series by which Harris and Tony become (uneasy) allies, rather than the (at least nominal) antagonists they had previously been.
This movement suggests a deconstruction of any simple opposition between the good FBI and the bad mob, in keeping with the postmodern complexities of The Sopranos as a whole. In addition, the antiterrorism story line of The Sopranos indicates a reorientation of the priorities of the FBI since 9/11; it also suggests the massive amount of U.S. government resources that have been expended on antiterrorism, often with very little payoff. Indeed, the failure of the FBI to come to any real conclusions from their investigations of either organized crime or terrorism demystifies the reputation of the FBI as an investigative juggernaut. At the same time, these failures are again very much in keeping with the postmodern texture of the series, in which investigative/interpretive efforts time and again come to naught. If the FBI can never quite seem to figure out just what is going on with either the Mafia or Al-Qaeda, then it is also the case that we as viewers can never quite come to definitive interpretations of these investigations.
In short, the investigative activities of the FBI become still another enactment of the basic postmodern epistemological skepticism that underlies the entire series. Meanwhile, the fact that the efforts to investigate terrorism are also dogged by a certain inherent racism also reinforces other important themes in the series. Indeed, race and racism often come to the fore in this series—but in complex ways that both challenge the notion that we have reached a postethnic era in America, and suggest that race has become a more complex category in the postmodern era. We will address this aspect of the series in the next chapter.
See Powers for a detailed account of the image-building efforts of Hoover’s FBI.
Oddly enough, while Hoover’s insistence that there was a communist behind every bush in America bordered on outright paranoia, his attitude toward organized crime was just the opposite. Indeed, until the Apalachin Meeting of 1957 made it clear that organized crime was thriving as never before, Hoover insisted that there was no such thing as the Mafia or any other highly organized criminal syndicate in the United States. See Bernstein.
For a recent history of the FBI that reflects this growing skepticism with regard to the bureau and its aims, see Weiner.
Given the fake-identity motif involved in the role of Ciccerone-Waldrup in the series, it is ironic that, during her first appearance—in episode 3.13 (“Army of One,” May 20, 2001)—the agent was played by Fairuza Balk. In the several subsequent episodes in which she appeared, she was played by Lola Glaudini. The scenes in “Army of One” were then reshot for continuity, with Glaudini replacing Balk in subsequent re-airings and on the DVD distribution of the series.
The FBI is willing to go to other extremes as well. On trial for racketeering, Uncle Junior knows that he is under heavy surveillance, so he must conduct mob-related business meetings in his doctor’s office, which is presumably not bugged. However, we learn in this episode that the hot nurse with whom he has been flirting is in fact an undercover FBI agent.
Yacowar plays up the comic aspects of this episode, noting that it and the series as a whole depict the FBI “as if they were a gang like Tony’s, only not as effective or smart” (126).
While Tony and his crew appear to feel that frequenting the Bada Bing! might be evidence that Ahmed and Muhammad must not be terrorists, it should be noted that several of the Muslims involved in the 9/11 bombings were known to patronize such establishments. See Harnden.