Joe Rogan Experience #1095 - TJ English & Joey Diaz

1. 0:00 – 2:49

   How Joey Diaz discovered T.J. English’s books (Westies, Havana Nocturne)

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      Oh, okay. (laughs) Boom, and we're live with Joey Diaz and TJ English. Uh, Joey turned me on to you a long time ago, Mr. English. Uh, he gave me a copy of The Westies, right?

   2. JDJoey Diaz0:16

      Yeah. It was... '98, '99.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      A long time ago-

   4. TET.J. English0:20

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:20

      ... he gave me that book.

   6. TET.J. English0:21

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      It's fantastic, really.

   8. TET.J. English0:24

      Thank you.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      Fascinating stuff.

   10. TET.J. English0:25

       Yeah. First book I published.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       Was it really?

   12. TET.J. English0:27

       Uh, The Westies, yeah, in 1990.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:29

       How'd you guys find out about each other?

   14. JDJoey Diaz0:31

       He wrote a book... A friend of mine turned me onto a book named Havana Nocturne, that was a small book, a fascinating read, and I was just blown away by him. And I went to a party one night and there was a literary agent there, and I go, "Do you fucking guys read Havana Nocturne?" They go, "We optioned it." And I was like, "That's fucking in-... That's gonna be a great book." It just, uh... It broke down the, the, uh... how Fidel took over it from three different cities, how it was going down in three different categories. And then I heard that he was writing a book about West New York and Union City Cubans, where I grew up. And I emailed him and I told him who I was, that my mother had a bar, and, uh, I grew up in that shit. And he hit me back and we became friends. He came to a show and...

   15. TET.J. English1:19

       Yeah, Joey reached out to me, you know, unfortunately, when I was just about finishing this book. So I had done most of the work and it was down on paper, but it was a trip. It was like he w-... He was like a character who walked out of the book.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:34

       (laughs)

   17. TET.J. English1:34

       And, uh, I wished I'd met him earlier, 'cause I hadn't met too many characters like him. Union City's amazing place. Uh, I don't think people realize it. It's one of those little enclaves, happens to be Cuban. It's like a mafia neighborhood, but it was Cubans, not Italians. Or it was like Hell's Kitchen, which I wrote about in The Westies, which was-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:54

       Yeah.

   19. TET.J. English1:54

       ... an Irish neighborhood. Very intense neighborhood. Uh, high premium on loyalty. Um, young males running loyalty games on each other all the time, from the age of six. Am I right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan2:07

       How so? What do you mean?

   21. TET.J. English2:09

       How far you'll go-

   22. JRJoe Rogan2:10

       T- Can I turn the sucker up towards you? Yeah.

   23. TET.J. English2:11

       How far, how far will you go for me, uh, you know?

   24. JRJoe Rogan2:13

       Yeah.

   25. TET.J. English2:14

       Uh, what are you willing to do for me? In the case of Hell's Kitchen and The Westies, it was cut up bodies. It was not only would you kill somebody for me, but will you make the body disappear? And they tested each other with, with the cutting up of the bodies. In Union City, a lot of it was, was political. Some of it was polit-... How anti-Fidel are you? How badly do you want to kill, you know, Fidel and help us reclaim our lost homeland? That was kind of behind a lot of things. It wasn't spoken about a lot, but it was sort of the hidden motivation.

2. 2:49 – 3:34

   English’s approach to crime history writing: macro context + intimate character stories

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:49

      Westies was a really fantastic book. Like, you, you went deep into that whole sort of sub-scene. You know, it's a, it's a very interesting crime-infested area.

   2. TET.J. English3:01

      Well, what, what I try to do with these books is to tell the macro story, the, the larger historical, sociopolitical story, and then get intimate and tell the interpersonal stories between the characters that actually live the story. That's a challenge. You gotta find people who are willing to talk to you and share information with you that they've kept quiet probably most of their lives. And then you get at the interpersonal stuff, 'cause these stories really are just human beings caught up in something that's bigger than them.

3. 3:34 – 4:35

   How long the research takes—and why a 125-page proposal can sell the project

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:34

      And how long... When you, when you're writing a book like The Corporation, which is your new book, or Westies, or any of your books, how much time do you spend doing the research and how much time do you spend actually writing the book?

   2. TET.J. English3:44

      Uh, it takes about three years to do these books, on average. And, and two of those years is research, probably.

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:52

      Wow.

   4. TET.J. English3:52

      Yeah, a lot of research.

   5. JRJoe Rogan3:53

      Interesting. So you... Do you bring this to the book company, the, the b- the publisher, and you say, "Hey, this is what I want to write a book about?"

   6. TET.J. English3:58

      You do a proposal.

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:00

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TET.J. English4:00

      And I do very, very detailed proposals. For The Corporation, I did a proposal that was 125 pages long. And it's a chapter by chapter breakdown. It's almost like a condensed version of the book. And, uh, you, you get more money from a publisher that way, as an advance, because you're showing them the whole thing, practically. They can see the, the finished product, almost. And also, you know, the movie interests. There was movie interest in this when The Corporation... based on that, on that proposal.

   9. JRJoe Rogan4:30

      Interesting.

   10. TET.J. English4:31

       Yeah, it was optioned based on that proposal before I even started writing the book.

   11. JRJoe Rogan4:35

       Really?

   12. TET.J. English4:35

       Yeah.

4. 4:35 – 6:07

   What “The Corporation” was: Cuban-American bolita empire under Jose Miguel Battle

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:35

      So what is The Corporation about?

   2. TET.J. English4:37

      The Corporation is a story of a Cuban American organized crime organization that began in the mid-1960s and existed all the way to the end of the century. And it was led by this mobster named Jose Miguel Battle, who was kind of a legendary figure in Cuban American circles, because he was a hero from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the, uh, the attempt, uh, to reclaim Cuba, take back Cuba, the ev- invasion, 1961, which was a disaster for everyone involved. Battle wound up in prison, along with the rest of the brigade. And when he got out and came back to the US, he was determined to get Castro, uh, and take back Cuba. So he set up this criminal thing, and it was based on, uh, one racket, primarily, bolita, the number, the lottery, the illegal lottery. Before the lottery was legal, it was illegal, and it was controlled by organized crime, and it was a huge moneymaker. Big moneymaker for the mob going back to the 1920s. Everyone bets the number. Little old ladies bet the number, priests, cops. You know, you can bet a nickel, you can bet a dime, you can bet $10,000. Hugely profitable for whoever controls and organizes it. Well, the Cubans controlled and organized it on the eastern coast of the United States, from New Jersey and New York all the way down to Miami. And the guy who controlled it was Battle, and he became legendary based on that.

5. 6:07 – 8:05

   Alliance with the Italian Mafia: Trafficante, Fat Tony Salerno, and ‘owning’ bolita

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:07

      They controlled the, the whole number system? 'Cause I know there was a lot of Italians that were involved in it as well, right?

   2. TET.J. English6:11

      Well, they went, they went to the mafia... Uh, one of the first things Battle did...Battle had been a cop, a vice cop, in Havana in the 1950s, during, uh, the era-

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:20

      Before the turnover.

   4. TET.J. English6:21

      Yeah, during the era when the mob, when Joey was talking about Havana Nocturne, that's what that book was about, the era of the mob in Havana in the '50s, Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante, and how they controlled that until Castro came along and spoiled the party. And the revolution happened and they got chased out of there. Battle had been a vice cop in Havana during those years, and he knew all those, uh, high-ranking mobsters. And in fact, he was a bag man who delivered money from the skim at the casinos in Havana to the presidential palace. So Battle knew how the world went round, and he made those connections. And when he finally gets to the US and wants to start his own thing, first thing he does is go to Santo Trafficante and says, "Can you make the proper introductions for me?" Trafficante introduces him to Fat Tony Salerno in New York City, who controls the numbers racket for all five families, and Battle says, "Look, things are changing in Cuba. Over the next couple of decades you're gonna have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Cubans coming to live in the United States. They all bet the number. (laughs) That's a huge market. If you let me take over this thing and organize it, you will get a piece of, you will get your piece of everything." And the mafia said yes. And so the Cubans took over, and they controlled everything. I mean, in New York City in the '70s and '80s, there were probably 200 to 300 bolita spots where you could go bet the number. That's what the Cubans called it, bolita, little ball. And, uh, so they controlled it, and they took care of the, the mafia, and everybody was, got fat and happy, uh, for a while, until it turned bad and they (laughs) started killing each other.

6. 8:05 – 14:01

   Joey’s childhood inside the numbers world: runners, dream books, and community mysticism

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:05

      Now, when, Joey, when you heard about this book, this is something that you were very intimately involved in when you were a kid.

   2. JDJoey Diaz8:10

      Very. You know, I come on your show and I tell you, there's 100 stories I could tell you and there's 1,000 I can't. And when he told ... When I read the thesis for this book, I just knew. I just fucking knew. You know, I grew up in numbers. Uh, when I went to Catholic school on Saturdays, when I, I came home on Fridays, on Saturdays at the age of eight, I was sent to different locations in the city, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and I would make $50 going to run errands, running numbers, go tell this guy the first number of the day is two, you know. So I grew up in it. I grew up in a house where the bookie would call my mother by three o'clock and go, "What's the numbers for the day?" And my mother would give him a fucking laundry list. You know? And, uh, it's very interesting, in this book he also covers the mysticism of the number. So if I'm at your house and your daughter walks in with a hockey shirt and her number's 13, I'll look at you and go, "Joe, give me a number from zero to nine." "Five." And I'd pick up the phone and I'd bet five 13. (gasps) If I look out my window and the cop car is 506, I put $5 on 506. If I have a dream about an eagle, when I go down to the bolita spot there's books that they sell, books of dreams, and I take that book and I look up eagle. And if eagle's number eight, (laughs) I pay eight 13. It's, you know, you, you were mentioning, um, a couple of months ago that your grandmother took numbers.

   3. TET.J. English9:41

      Yeah.

   4. JDJoey Diaz9:42

      Grandmother was Sicilian. Sicilian people have the same, uh, every day they live, "Today's the day."

   5. JRJoe Rogan9:50

      Yep.

   6. JDJoey Diaz9:50

      "Today's the day, Joe Rogan."

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:51

      Yep.

   8. JDJoey Diaz9:52

      "Today's the day I'm hitting the number."

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:53

      Yep.

   10. JDJoey Diaz9:53

       "I'm not getting..." You know, that-

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:55

       It's all she talked about. (laughs)

   12. JDJoey Diaz9:56

       That dream, that dream of-

   13. JRJoe Rogan9:58

       Yeah.

   14. JDJoey Diaz9:58

       ... again, we're going back to an immigrant mentality.

   15. JRJoe Rogan10:00

       Yeah.

   16. JDJoey Diaz10:00

       That those three numbers today, if God wants, if God is real, what he says is true, my number's gonna come out today.

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:08

       Yeah.

   18. JDJoey Diaz10:09

       When is my ship gonna come in? That-

   19. TET.J. English10:11

       Right, right, right. That's it. You know, you work a-

   20. JRJoe Rogan10:12

       That, that, that hope.

   21. JDJoey Diaz10:12

       You work a plain Jane dream, you're a, you're a blue-collar person, and on the way home every day by 3:30 you put the number in. That's it.

   22. TET.J. English10:21

       Yeah.

   23. JDJoey Diaz10:21

       That's what you do.

   24. TET.J. English10:22

       Something to believe in. It's like, it's like a religion.

   25. JDJoey Diaz10:24

       That's something to believe in.

   26. JRJoe Rogan10:25

       Yeah.

   27. TET.J. English10:25

       Yeah. Numerology. And with Cubans, uh, it was very mystical. It was tied into, uh, dreams and belief. The idea was, you bet the number and you try to make your dreams come true. That's literally what you're doing. You're trying to make your dreams come true. And the bolita guys, the boliteros, the ones who control it, they're the dream makers. They're the guys who are making it possible for your dreams to come true. So they had tremendous stature in the community.

   28. JDJoey Diaz10:53

       In the community.

   29. TET.J. English10:54

       Yeah.

   30. JDJoey Diaz10:54

       They were dream solvers. So you work D- TJ's Jose Battle and you're an independent bookie. Your job is to sit at a ............................ lounge in West New York from ni- 10:00 to 3:00 drinking, and all day long people come in and go, "Joe, give me five 17, $3. Give me three 03, $1." At three o'clock, 3:30, a number comes up. If that number wins, if I give you 500, you get 3,000 from Battle. You give me 2,500. So you make 500 off the top and then I tip you. The thing that Battle did was he didn't take 10 points. He let you run your independent action unless you called it into him. You know, it's very... You watch the movie, uh, uh... What's the movie with Mickey Rourke and the Chinese people? Year of the Dragon.
7. 14:01 – 17:18

   When money turns violent: internal killings, revenge culture, and Battle’s legend

   1. JRJoe Rogan14:01

      Now, is, is this between Cubans?

   2. TET.J. English14:03

      Between Cubans, between the Cubans and the Italians. See, this guy, Battle, was very charismatic leader, uh, with some great leadership qualities. He'd been a hero in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He saved some guys' lives. Um, when I first heard that story, I didn't... I said, "I gotta verify that. Maybe this is just a story a guy told about himself to burnish his legend." So I found the guys that he saved, and I found the guy's two brothers who went with him to save that the guys that he saved, and I went to Cuba, to the Bay of Pigs, to the exact location where he saved these guys, to verify this story, and it was absolutely true. He, in an act of incredible heroism, he, he saved the life of a number of his platoon members. And so that was his reputation from then on. He was revered in the community. He was a hero, and people defended him. Even, even when it, it turned ugly and he became a ruthless boss who was killing people left and right, he had his defenders because of his legend as a hero in the community. And so, um, the power that he had. But he also had this, uh... (laughs) Joey and I were talking about this. Um, Cubans have this, Latinos have this, everybody has it, but Cubans have it, uh, a desire for revenge. This guy... You know, the Bay of Pigs invasion was an attempt at revenge, to get revenge against Castro, and they were humiliated by that process. And a lot of the guys from that generation had an unfinished agenda for revenge. So if you wronged this guy, Battle, in any way, he was gonna get you, even if it took years and years of calculation. I mean, there's stories in the book about this one guy who killed his brother named Pululu. He took, it took nine years and 12 attempts before they finally killed this guy, Pululu. They shot him in his hospital. He was in the hospital. They shot him. Had a assassin dress up as a male nurse and go into the hospital and shoot him between the eyes. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan16:11

      Wow.

   4. TET.J. English16:11

      'Cause there had been so many failed attempts, they weren't gonna fail this time. And that's... And Battle took 12 years. I mean, took nine years.

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:18

      Did they catch the assassin?

   6. TET.J. English16:20

      No, never caught him. Really. No way.

   7. JDJoey Diaz16:21

      Just bang and slipped out of the window.

   8. TET.J. English16:22

      Just disappeared into nothingness. I believe the assassin got killed later 'cause he was talking about it, having done it, and so Battle had him killed.

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:30

      Wow.

   10. TET.J. English16:30

       Yeah. So the, the revenge, uh, motive, the revenge motive, um, kind of drove Battle off the deep end. And, uh, somewhere along the line, he broke bad, so to speak. I mean, I don't know if he was ever good and had to break bad, but he started doing internal killings that really had nothing to do about business. They were all about revenge.

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:52

       Well, thi- this is a, a theme that happens a lot with organized crime people, right? It's like they just get a taste of killing people and it becomes easier and easier, and then they, uh... Like, that was the thing about Murder Machine, right? About Roy DeMeo?

   12. JDJoey Diaz17:04

       Right.

   13. TET.J. English17:04

       Yeah.

   14. JDJoey Diaz17:04

       He just was fucking nuts.

   15. TET.J. English17:05

       He just kept, just was killing people

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:06

       He just became addicted to it, yeah.

   17. JDJoey Diaz17:07

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       ... with anything after a while. That's another book you gave me. (laughs)

   19. JDJoey Diaz17:09

       Yeah, Murder Machine. I was reading all those books on the road-

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:13

       Yeah.

   21. JDJoey Diaz17:13

       ... because I was auditioning for so many Italian roles-

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       (laughs)

   23. JDJoey Diaz17:15

       ... and I never really knew the history of it.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:18

       Ah.

8. 17:18 – 34:38

   Bay of Pigs fallout and the CIA/Cuban exile pipeline: Watergate, terrorism, and JFK theories

   1. JDJoey Diaz17:18

      So I was just trying to read all those books just so when I went in, I had an idea of what these characters and who they were. I saw them growing up. I saw these guys, you know, growing up. I just didn't... The interesting thing about this book was, uh, talking to the Bay of Pigs, is that they knew that they were coming. Like Fidel knew-

   2. JRJoe Rogan17:39

      Right.

   3. JDJoey Diaz17:39

      ... he was coming.

   4. JRJoe Rogan17:40

      Yeah.

   5. JDJoey Diaz17:40

      He put barbed wire or something in his corral. They, the, the soldiers all slashed their feet as they were landing. There was four battalions, uh, I think, and 250 men.

   6. TET.J. English17:51

      Well, you know what happened when they landed?

   7. JDJoey Diaz17:52

      What happened?

   8. TET.J. English17:53

      There were klieg lights set up on the beach-

   9. JDJoey Diaz17:55

      Yeah, they knew there was a

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:56

       (laughs)

   11. TET.J. English17:56

       ... when they landed-

   12. JDJoey Diaz17:57

       It was a scam.

   13. TET.J. English17:57

       ... they flip, they flipped the lights on and it lit it up like a movie set right when these guys landed.

   14. JRJoe Rogan18:03

       Jesus.

   15. TET.J. English18:03

       Uh, they got slaughtered. They got slaughtered. And, and they, they felt they'd been betrayed by Kennedy-

   16. JRJoe Rogan18:09

       Yeah.

   17. TET.J. English18:10

       ... you know, that there was supposed to be air cover, and the air cover never came.

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:14

       Why was that?

   19. TET.J. English18:15

       Because Kennedy, Kennedy always had... Uh, this operation was started by the Eisenhower administration and, and the CIA. It was a CIA operation. Kennedy inherited it, and he never really... He always had mixed feelings about it. I mean, it was illegal. Uh, it was a, uh-... an illegal, secret covert operation, an attempt to overthrow a, a, a government. Um, it would have been seen as an illegal act in the eyes of the world to do it. So Kennedy was trying to do it so it could be done in such a way that it could never blow back on his administration. And so he, he withheld air cover at a crucial point in that, in that war. It lasted three days. And they got slaughtered, and they got, and they got imprisoned, and they had a lot of resentment towards Kennedy. I mean, I go into the book-

   20. JDJoey Diaz19:04

       Still.

   21. TET.J. English19:05

       ... a little bit about the Kennedy assassination and the belief that a lot of... That a handful of those Cubans may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination along with the Italians, with the mob, because they were working hand-in-hand with the CIA.

   22. JRJoe Rogan19:20

       Yeah, that was one of the leading conspiracies-

   23. TET.J. English19:23

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan19:23

       ... outside of the CIA killing him. And even the CIA killing him was a part of the Bay of Con- the Bay of Pigs conspiracy.

   25. TET.J. English19:30

       Yeah, yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan19:30

       And also the, the idea that he wanted to disband the CIA. There was a really interesting article recently that was dismissing almost every single conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination, they said, "Except the CIA one." There's legitimate possibilities that the CIA-

   27. TET.J. English19:47

       Well, well you can bet your ass that if the CIA was involved, then Cubans were involved.

   28. JDJoey Diaz19:51

       Yeah. Now let me ask you something.

   29. JRJoe Rogan19:52

       Yeah.

   30. JDJoey Diaz19:52

       In the book, you speak about Fidel's mistress.
9. 34:38 – 39:14

   Joey’s street training: surveillance instincts, code language, and living under threat

   1. JDJoey Diaz34:38

      You know? Like I was never allowed to walk home the same way.

   2. JRJoe Rogan34:42

      You had to walk home different directions?

   3. JDJoey Diaz34:44

      Different directions, keep my eyes open-

   4. JRJoe Rogan34:45

      Really?

   5. JDJoey Diaz34:45

      ... around the car.

   6. JRJoe Rogan34:46

      Don't, don't pattern it.

   7. JDJoey Diaz34:47

      Because of my mother's operation, I could never just walk home on Berger line.

   8. JRJoe Rogan34:51

      Ah.

   9. JDJoey Diaz34:51

      I had to walk to New York Avenue and walk down just to see if I saw a suspicious car.

   10. TET.J. English34:55

       Now, that's smart. Do you-

   11. JDJoey Diaz34:56

       Do you remember in Uma- Remember we were in San Francisco about 15 years ago and we had the crew, Tate, Eddie, uh, you, me, Ari, Duncan, and Redman. We're walking down the street in San Francisco. As we approached, I saw a drug dealer go down. I hit Ari, I go, "Ari, look at that drug dealer." You guys were looking at the whole thing. Not one of you saw it.

   12. JRJoe Rogan35:16

       Yeah.

   13. JDJoey Diaz35:17

       Ari goes, "How the fuck did you see that?"

   14. JRJoe Rogan35:20

       Right.

   15. JDJoey Diaz35:21

       Because I was raised like that. I was raised to go out and look for cars. I was never allowed to walk home the same way twice-

   16. JRJoe Rogan35:29

       Mm.

   17. TET.J. English35:29

       Yeah. Now-

   18. JDJoey Diaz35:29

       ... because of the bolita business.

   19. TET.J. English35:31

       Now let me ask you about that, because w- is this an instinct you learned on your own or were you actually trained?

   20. JDJoey Diaz35:37

       I was... When I became a numbers runner as a child, I was always... My mom would put a... When I was a kid and I came from Cuba, my mother put a, uh, a big gold chain on me. You know why?

   21. TET.J. English35:48

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JDJoey Diaz35:49

       Because she dared you to take it off my... She... My mother wanted you to take that chain 'cause I would have to fight.

   23. JRJoe Rogan35:56

       Really?

   24. JDJoey Diaz35:56

       Yeah. So I remember one time, uh, Mr. Softy came and he looked at my gold thing and my mother yelled from the window, "Don't let him touch your fucking chain." Yesterday, I went to Glendale and my daughter was throwing hoops, a red hoop, and she was chasing 'em, all four of 'em, by herself. She's an only child. So there was other kids there. And the red hoop fell through the thing and some six-year-old took it from her. And my daughter went to put her head down. I go, "Oye, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Go take it back. Go take it back." And she just looked at me.And the parent was like, "That's an effective way of parenting. She got it back from your daughter. Don't ever stay hit in my fucking house."

   25. JRJoe Rogan36:37

       Wait a minute. The w- the mom f- or the kid that took it was giving you shit?

   26. JDJoey Diaz36:41

       Oh, yeah, because this is today's America.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:43

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JDJoey Diaz36:43

       My America, we don't come home hit.

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:46

       What did, what did the mom want you to do?

   30. JDJoey Diaz36:48

       The mom and the dad, two Glendale fucking gentiles. The dad said, "That's an effective way of, of whatever, but you ain't saying nothing, bitch. Your daughter... A couple weeks ago, a little girl took the swing from my daughter." (snaps fingers) "Take the swing back."
10. 39:14 – 41:54

    Local corruption up close: payoffs, friendly arrests, judges ‘owned,’ and politics as a racket

    1. JDJoey Diaz39:14

       My mom didn't hide nothing from me growing up. That's good and bad. That had good things for me, but a lot of bad things for me. You know, one of the things that he touched upon in his book was not only about Jose Battle, but the political corruption that came with it. In my 20 years, have I ever talked to you about politics? Don't know I ever... I wouldn't listen to politics if you paid me because it's all bullshit. I saw it in a, in a, in a micro level. You know, when you're, when you're a president, who do you get donations from? Big pharm, guns, whatever. When you're a small mayor, who do you get your donations from? The pharmacy, the pizza place, the numbers. So I came from a society where those numbers were controlling everything in, in North Bergen, Union City, and West New York. Remember, that shit's a felony in Jersey-

    2. JRJoe Rogan40:09

       Hmm.

    3. JDJoey Diaz40:09

       ... but it's a misdemeanor in New York.

    4. JRJoe Rogan40:11

       Really?

    5. JDJoey Diaz40:12

       Numbers? It used to be a misdemeanor. As a matter of fact, they would call you, and they would go, "Joe, lieutenant." Well, he wouldn't say that because the phones were taped. He would just call you and go, "Oh, you're getting a visit today. That means if you got 5,000 in your pocket, give it to Jamie, clean out the house, leave some paperwork."

    6. JRJoe Rogan40:31

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JDJoey Diaz40:32

       "At 2:00, I come, I handcuff you, I take your money, I write you a summons, I bring you down to the station, we giggle. And then after I let you out, I meet you around the corner. And if you had 2,500, I give you 1,250."

    8. JRJoe Rogan40:45

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JDJoey Diaz40:46

       "And that's the cost of doing business."

    10. JRJoe Rogan40:47

        Right.

    11. TET.J. English40:48

        Hmm.

    12. JDJoey Diaz40:48

        You know, there's a funny line in Goodfellas when he goes, "How can I go to school with all that goody-goody bullshit and saluting the flag when I went..." I was the same way.

    13. JRJoe Rogan40:56

        Yeah.

    14. JDJoey Diaz40:57

        Like, I saw what happened. I saw the political system. I saw two cops coming in, one detective once a week and one beat guy. My mom would give him a drink and an envelope.

    15. JRJoe Rogan41:09

        Yeah, I don't know what my grandmother did, what... how she was involved, but I told you she went to jail.

    16. JDJoey Diaz41:14

        Right.

    17. JRJoe Rogan41:14

        She went to jail for running the numbers. She, she went to jail because she wouldn't give anybody up. They wanted her to give up whoever the fuck was at the other end of the organization. And so for like six months, we were always trying to like, "Where the fuck is grandma?" And she'd say, "Oh, she's visiting her sister."

    18. JDJoey Diaz41:29

        (laughs)

    19. JRJoe Rogan41:29

        It was always, "She's visiting Aunt Josie."

    20. TET.J. English41:31

        Mm-hmm.

    21. JRJoe Rogan41:31

        And just no one had ever found her.

    22. JDJoey Diaz41:32

        They give you a year-

    23. JRJoe Rogan41:33

        Yeah.

    24. JDJoey Diaz41:33

        ... for bookmaking in Jersey.

    25. JRJoe Rogan41:35

        Yeah

    26. JDJoey Diaz41:35

        Even six, five months.

    27. JRJoe Rogan41:36

        Right.

    28. JDJoey Diaz41:37

        And they put you on house arrest, and you're done.

    29. JRJoe Rogan41:39

        She would knit sweaters and shit for the fucking guards in jail. (laughs)

    30. TET.J. English41:44

        Well, a lot of times Battle would own the judges, so you wouldn't do any time at all.
11. 41:54 – 54:26

    Why the Corporation lasted—and the ‘untouchable’ CIA mystique

    1. JRJoe Rogan41:54

       What's fascinating to me is... about this, is also fascinating about the mob itself, was that a lot of it is basically dissolved. That all this came from immigration and that this, uh, this melting pot of the United States, and they all came from all these other places and all this organized crime sort of like was running the c- the cities in the East Coast, but most of it has kind of gone the wayside, most.

    2. TET.J. English42:19

       Uh, I would, I would dispute that a little bit. I, I think traditional organized crime as we knew it in the 20th century has gone by the wayside, Italian, Irish, Jewish. That sort of assimilated into the system and has dissipated. But there's new generations-

    3. JRJoe Rogan42:36

       Russians.

    4. TET.J. English42:36

       ... of immigrants that are playing this out. Jamaicans-

    5. JRJoe Rogan42:39

       Jamaicans.

    6. TET.J. English42:39

       ... Dominicans, Chinese-

    7. JRJoe Rogan42:41

       So it's new people.

    8. TET.J. English42:41

       ... Russians, Mexicans. It's happening. And I'd further make the argument that the corruption that was created...... during Prohibition in the 1920s, that's where this system was created, during Prohibition in the 1920s. The, uh, alliance between the underworld and the upper world, the connection between the political apparatus, law enforcement, and the cor- criminal rackets, that template was laid down during Prohibition, and it was in effect for the next 100 years. I think that template still exists. You pick up a newspaper in any US city, large or midsize city, and what are you gonna see on the first couple pages? Some local representative who just got indicted for taking money from some criminal element to, uh, see that they got a law passed, or that they got some municipal contract. Uh, that hasn't gone away.

    9. JRJoe Rogan43:33

       Mm-hmm.

    10. TET.J. English43:34

        That still exists everywhere. What happens is there's a ebb and flow. Certain rackets come and go. It was illegal booze, then it was labor racketeering. Now, it's narcotics. It was bolita at one time. There's always something, you know? As long as there's commerce being done on a large scale, there's always room for corruption.

    11. JRJoe Rogan43:53

        As long as there's things that are, are illegal-

    12. TET.J. English43:55

        Yes. Yes, now-

    13. JRJoe Rogan43:55

        ... where there's a market for it.

    14. TET.J. English43:56

        ... like narcotics, yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan43:56

        Like marijuana, I mean, that was the big argument, right? The big argument about the marijuana laws in the United States is if they made it legal, it would, it would severely limit-

    16. TET.J. English44:05

        Yeah.

    17. JRJoe Rogan44:05

        ... the power that the cartel in Mexico has-

    18. TET.J. English44:07

        Right.

    19. JRJoe Rogan44:07

        ... and cut all that violence out.

    20. TET.J. English44:08

        Right.

    21. JRJoe Rogan44:09

        Basically, the same shit that was going on with Al Capone and, and, and everything during the, uh, liquor, um, dur- the time when liquor was i- illegal.

    22. TET.J. English44:16

        Yeah, because the criminal rackets feed the system.

    23. JRJoe Rogan44:19

        Yeah.

    24. TET.J. English44:19

        And human beings are, you know ... It's flawed human beings at every level of the system, dirty cops, cops on the take. I mean-

    25. JRJoe Rogan44:27

        Is it more difficult now for them to pull something like this off?

    26. TET.J. English44:29

        It's less systemic. You know what I mean? I mean, back in the day, you know, uh, you'd have corruption that was all the way through the chain of command, you know, and everyone was sort of in on it. That-

    27. JRJoe Rogan44:41

        Did you see The Seven Five?

    28. TET.J. English44:42

        Yes, I did.

    29. JRJoe Rogan44:43

        Yeah.

    30. TET.J. English44:43

        I, I also saw your, your interview with Mike O'Dowd.
12. 54:26 – 1:09:30

    How bolita actually worked: racetrack numbers, early/late systems, laundering, and modern scams

    1. TET.J. English54:26

       ... for betting, sort of ways you could do it. But let's explain this, where the number comes from.

    2. JRJoe Rogan54:30

       Okay.

    3. TET.J. English54:31

       Uh, the total mutual handle at the racetrack is published in the newspaper every evening-

    4. JDJoey Diaz54:36

       The daily news.

    5. TET.J. English54:37

       ... and again, and again in the morning, how much money was bet total at the racetrack that day. The last three numbers, that's the daily number. So everyone, you know, has... It's the s- same number for everybody. You know what it is as soon as it comes out in the newspaper, and that's how it's determined.

    6. JRJoe Rogan54:53

       Wow.

    7. JDJoey Diaz54:54

       So you have, you have the, the individual numbers, and then you have the early number, which, which is called what come out of Brooklyn.... Casale in Brooklyn, and then you have the late number. What's the New York number? That's a-

    8. TET.J. English55:07

       The Brooklyn number and the New York number. Yeah. (laughs)

    9. JRJoe Rogan55:08

       So how did they all decide, like, what it would be based on?

    10. TET.J. English55:12

        That was decided probably 100 years ago by some, by some, you know, uh, Guinea who ran, who ran it for the Italians. And maybe it came from Sicily, whatever the origins of it are-

    11. JDJoey Diaz55:23

        You couldn't try... You couldn't fix that though.

    12. JRJoe Rogan55:25

        How can you not fix it?

    13. TET.J. English55:26

        It's, it's, it's gambling. It's gambling.

    14. JRJoe Rogan55:27

        How can you not fix it?

    15. JDJoey Diaz55:28

        You can't fix it.

    16. JRJoe Rogan55:28

        Why is that?

    17. JDJoey Diaz55:29

        Because it's the... I don't know what the track is gonna make that fucking sense.

    18. TET.J. English55:32

        Yeah, how do you fix that?

    19. JRJoe Rogan55:33

        Right. How would you fix that?

    20. JDJoey Diaz55:34

        How the fuck do you fix the last three numbers? It's a mystery.

    21. TET.J. English55:35

        Now, check this out. Certain organizations-

    22. JRJoe Rogan55:38

        (clears throat)

    23. TET.J. English55:38

        ... like the Corporation, part of the reason people wanted to bet with them and liked to bet with them, is they would have somebody at the racetrack, so the minute that number was posted, they'd know the number. So you'd get your pa... You didn't have to wait around for the newspaper.

    24. JDJoey Diaz55:53

        You didn't have to wait for the newspaper or call sports.

    25. TET.J. English55:55

        Yeah.

    26. JDJoey Diaz55:55

        You had to call sports, uh... Nobody remembers that. You remember that, TJ. "How you doing? Welcome. This is Joe Rogan."

    27. JRJoe Rogan56:02

        (laughs)

    28. JDJoey Diaz56:02

        "You just called SportsLine. You gotta sit by a payphone and put 35 cents in."

    29. TET.J. English56:06

        Yes.

    30. JDJoey Diaz56:06

        "And they would run, 'All right. NHL.' And at the track-"
13. 1:09:30 – 1:34:56

    The Two Block Rule war: arson campaigns, civilian deaths, and federal heat

    1. TET.J. English1:09:30

       And I think that was even more pronounced with the Cubans because of the history of bolita, the cuh- and the cultural significance of bolita going back to Cuba, that's something they brought with them to the United States. And it was just, you know? Like I said, it wasn't seen as a, as a criminal thing. It wasn't seen as a violent, criminal thing. Now what happens with Jose Miguel Battle is at a certain point, 1985, he moves from Union City to Miami. And he moves the hierarchy of the organization to Miami. But the money's still being made in New York City. The organization is as strong as ever, and the money's being made in the five boroughs of New York. And it's being shipped down to Miami where this guy now lives like a, a gentleman farmer on an estate. He surrounds himself with mamey trees. Uh, mamey is a fruit from Cuba that he associates-

    2. JDJoey Diaz1:10:21

       He's, he's had the shake.

    3. TET.J. English1:10:22

       He-

    4. JDJoey Diaz1:10:22

       I've given him the cholo shake.

    5. TET.J. English1:10:23

       Oh yeah, did you... It's a wonderful fruit, beautiful fruit.

    6. JDJoey Diaz1:10:26

       Ah, great milkshake.

    7. TET.J. English1:10:27

       So he associates it with his childhood, so the first thing he does is he surrounds his estate down in Miami with this fruit from his childhood. And he lives down there now, far removed from New York. Meanwhile, back in New York, a war breaks out between the Italians and the Cubans over this thing called the Two Block Rule. When the Cubans and the Italians formed their alliance, they established a rule that you couldn't open, nobody could open up a bolita spot closer than two blocks to a preexisting bolita spot. Somebody violated that rule. I don't even know after investigating it who f- who violated that rule, but that rule got violated and it turned into a nasty f- uh, war, an arson war. They started firebombing each other's spots, and a lot of innocent people got killed, man, incinerated. A four-year-old girl got killed. Uh, it became horrific. It lasted for about eight or nine months. There was something like 70 murders, maybe 25 firebombings at different bolita spots. It got so ugly, it brought down the heat of the feds. Nobody could ignore this corporation thing anymore, so it brought a lot of unwanted attention to the- Do they know who initially started it off? Who, who violated it? Yeah, yeah, he became a snitch and told the whole story. So the guy who violated it... Oh, not the guy who violated it, but the guy who became the number one arsonist... Ah. ... and set up the whole campaign of arson. He became a snitch and, and told the whole thing chapter and verse. So it was basically just one cocky person just decided, "Fuck this Two Block Rule." Well, he was probably authorized by w- his bosses, uh, to do it. Mm-hmm. Right. "Yeah, go over and burn that spot. We'll show them." And then that happened, and then the response was, "Well, we'll show them. Go burn his spot." But burning the spot came out of someone violating the original deal- Yes. ... with two blocks away. Well, that's, that was the reason the first burning happened. Do they know who the guy was that started the first- They had a sit-down. ... Two Block violations? They had a sit-down (laughs) about it. Here's how failed it was. The, the Italians and the Cubans had a major sit-down about it to discuss it, to try to resolve it, to keep it from exploding into war. At that sit-down, they didn't resolve anything, and after they came out of the restaurant where the sit-down took place, a drive-by shooting occurred and one of the Cubans got shot at the restaurant coming out of the sit-down. And then the war was on, man. It was on. Like Battle said, "We're at war with the Italians." That's what he said with, with his people. And Battle was ready for it, man. He was good to go. I mean, he, he was ready for that war. He seemed to want it. He seemed to cherish the idea that they were gonna go to war with the Italians. And so they were ordering all these horrific... And you know how they did the arsons? They'd get these mamalukes to fill up a, a pail with gasoline. Not, not even a can, not even a closed can. An open pail. And, you know, that could spill. And they took that pail of gas and they'd walk into a bodega, a bolita spot, and they'd dump it on the floor and light it on fire.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:13:25

       Ara E. Roddick, Jr. (laughs)

    9. TET.J. English1:13:25

       ... A- and whoever happened to be in there, too bad for them. And people would die a horrible death. They got incinerated. I have some pictures in the book that are almost too horrific. I had others that were so bad I, I didn't wanna use them in the book.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:13:38

        Really?

    11. JDJoey Diaz1:13:38

        Now, you put something in that book that really blew my mind. You said that in 1975 or '76, in Hudson County where I'm from, there was 40 car bombings.

    12. TET.J. English1:13:48

        Oh, man. Yeah.

    13. JDJoey Diaz1:13:49

        40 car bombings.

    14. TET.J. English1:13:49

        Well, fi-

    15. JDJoey Diaz1:13:50

        And I, I remember one.

    16. TET.J. English1:13:51

        Bombings, not all car bombings.

    17. JDJoey Diaz1:13:53

        Bombings.

    18. TET.J. English1:13:53

        Yeah.

    19. JDJoey Diaz1:13:53

        In Hudson County, from 7th Street to 88th Street there, where you have Bayonne, Hoboken, that stuff, there was f- uh, 41 car bombings.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:14:02

        That's incredible.

    21. TET.J. English1:14:03

        There was a time in the '70s in the US where bombings, homemade bombs were like the preferred, uh, weapon of organized crime. There were... There was a, there was a bombing war in Cleveland over this Irish gangster in the '70s. It was, it was pretty common.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:14:18

        Didn't they do a movie about that?

    23. JDJoey Diaz1:14:18

        In Philly too, they made a bomb with the nails.

    24. TET.J. English1:14:21

        Uh.

    25. JDJoey Diaz1:14:21

        The guy that had gotten, uh... The Sicilians were good with bombs.

    26. TET.J. English1:14:23

        Yeah. They did make a movie about Danny Greene.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:14:26

        Yeah.

    28. TET.J. English1:14:26

        Yeah.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:14:26

        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that movie called?

    30. TET.J. English1:14:28

        Kill the Irishman.

Episode duration: 2:32:09