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Mr. Sliwa had insisted that the Gottis were behind the attack, which came at a time when he and his volunteer crime patrol group were feuding publicly with the New York police. But he could not identify his assailants, and a month after the assault, the police ruled out any connection to the Gambino crime family.
In the courtroom today, Mr. Sliwa also described in equally vivid detail an earlier beating in his neighborhood by three men armed with baseball bats. He also believed that beating, on April 23, 1992, was ordered by the elder Gotti and Gambino crime family.
The witness recalled that while John J. Gotti was on trial for racketeering in that period in 1992, Mr. Sliwa denounced him on his radio show as "America's Number One Drug Dealer." He had said that whenever anyone saw a young man on crack, "You can thank John Gotti Sr., he's responsible for the import of those drugs."
Under questioning by the prosecutor, Joon Kim, Mr. Sliwa admitted that he had fabricated a series of criminal incidents "that clearly had not taken place" in the late 1970's and early 1980's, in order to attract favorable media attention to a crime patrol group he founded, which in 1979 became the Guardian Angels.
He described the fabrications as "a very foolish thing and a very stupid thing to do," and said that they were "totally off the wall."
In his cross-examination, Mr. Gotti's lawyer, Jeffrey Licthman, raised new questions about Mr. Sliwa's credibility, his accounts of criminal attacks that he suffered, and the rescues that the Guardian Angels carried out in that period.
In interviews with the press and New York City police, Mr. Sliwa had admitted that he manufactured six episodes in which he claimed that the Guardian Angels had come to the rescue when police failed to act. But when Mr. Lichtman grilled the witness about a nighttime attack in August of 1981 by gang members in Washington, D.C., he cast doubt on Mr. Sliwa's claims that the episode ever took place.
Mr. Sliwa insisted that the attack was authentic, but acknowledged that the details sounded very much like those of earlier episodes that he had admitted were fabricated.
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