GRAVANO AND SON ARE TO ENTER GUILTY PLEAS IN ECSTASY CASE

Salvatore Gravano faced the prospect of hearing his own voice played
in court in nearly 150 wiretapped phone conversations. He faced the
embarrassment of hearing his desert drug empire detailed on the
witness stand by a government turncoat. So the gangland killer known
as Sammy the Bull has decided to plead guilty to running a
multimillion-dollar Ecstasy ring in Arizona.

A single-page letter filed by federal prosecutors yesterday said that
Mr. Gravano and his 25-year-old son, Gerard, would appear in Federal
District Court in Brooklyn this morning to admit to their crimes.

As stated in the letter, "Both defendants have agreed to enter guilty
pleas to Count Two of the superseding indictment, which charges
conspiracy to distribute MDMA," as Ecstasy is known to scientists.

The government refused to discuss Mr. Gravano's pending plea. When Mr.
Gravano was picked up in Arizona with his son, his wife and his 28-
year-old daughter on Feb. 24, 2000, some law enforcement officials
said that his arrest highlighted the paradox of granting leniency to
Mafia turncoats. Although Mr. Gravano helped the government bring down
nearly 40 gangsters - most notably John J. Gotti, the jailed Gambino
family don and his own former boss - he soon returned to a life of
crime.

Mr. Gravano's guilty plea will rob the public of the spectacle of
watching him return as a defendant to the Brooklyn courthouse where he
kept juries spellbound with his testimony.

From 1976 to 1991, Mr. Gravano served as a made man in the Gambino
family, rising at one point to the level of underboss. He defected at
the end of 1991 and admitted to having murdered 19 men.

The witness protection program relocated him to suburban Arizona,
where he opened the Marathon Swimming Pool Company, a pool
installation business, under the name Jimmy Moran.

The government was prepared to argue that shortly after Mr. Gravano
left federal protection in 1998, he established a southwest chapter of
La Cosa Nostra called the Arizona Mafia. The group included several
underlings in his Ecstasy business, which purchased pills from a man
named Ilan Zarger, a drug supplier based in Brooklyn who had ties to
the Israeli mob.

After the United States Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement
Administration opened an investigation of Mr. Zarger, federal agents
recruited at least seven informants in the Zarger organization.

One of them reported having met with Mr. Gravano last summer at a
restaurant near Phoenix, where Mr. Gravano is said to have boasted: "I
own Arizona. It's locked down. You can't sell pills here without going
through me."

This month, Mr. Gravano's troubles mushroomed.

At the beginning of May, one of his lieutenants, Michael J. Papa,
pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges in Brooklyn and agreed to
testify against Mr. Gravano.

Within days, Mr. Gravano and his son were served with a new indictment
that charged them with having threatened Mr. Papa in order to keep his
mouth shut.

The following week, federal prosecutors released a 34-page document
detailing what they gently termed Mr. Gravano's "other crimes." He was
accused of hatching four murder plots to consolidate his control of
the Arizona drug market and was said to have threatened to kill
Gerard's girlfriend because she was bragging to her friends that she
was dating "Sammy the Bull's son."

Gerard Gravano asked two weeks ago to be tried separately, arguing
that his father's reputation would bias the jury. Judge Allyne R. Ross
turned down the request.

Judge Ross also ruled this week that the government could introduce
some of the 40,000 hours of conversation it had secretly taped ó a
compilation of wiretaps so extensive that it includes an interlude in
which Mr. Gravano is heard singing to his dog.

The entire Gravano family - including Mr. Gravano's wife, Debra, and
daughter, Karen - still face state drug charges in Arizona, with
trials expected to begin in September.

"We will maintain the same schedule," said Pati Urias, a spokeswoman
for the Arizona attorney general's office. "We don't expect this to
have effect on Arizona's case."

Lynne F. Stewart, Mr. Gravano's lawyer, was undergoing oral surgery
yesterday and was not available for comment. Gerard Gravano's lawyer,
Thomas White, did not return telephone calls.