JOHN Gotti thought he was being a wiseguy when he and his top aides stopped talking business at the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy because they knew the place was bugged.

In an exercise of caution, the Dapper Don moved high-level discussions to a hallway behind the Ravenite and an apartment above the club.

Turns out that Gotti & Co. had neutralized the bug in the Ravenite, but the bugs in the hallway and the apartment picked up virtually every incriminating word by Gotti, reputed underboss Frank (Frankie Loc) LoCascio and consigliere Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano.

Now they're all in Jail without bail awaiting trial on racketeering and murder charges. On the tapes, the three men are heard discussing killings and ways to beat the judicial system in such clear fashion that a relatively liberal judge has remanded them as dangers to the community who are likely to obstruct justice if out on the streets.

To start at the beginning, Michael Cirelli, a Gambino associate for many years, was the caretaker of the Ravenite Social Club. Until his death on Jan, 16, 1988, he lived above the club, in Apartment 10, at 247 Mulberry St.

In 1979, Cirelli, armed with a base ball bat, chased detectives from the Manhattan district attorney's office out of the building when they tried to bug the joint. They had given the building's guard dog some doped-up meatballs.

Right after Cirelli died, FBI agent bugged the Ravenite. A few months later, they bugged Gotti's Ozone Park headquarters, the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, where Gotti and Gravano talked business on Fridays and Saturdays. In July 1988, that eavesdropping device was discovered, and Gotti and company "ceased talking inside the club," according to court papers filed in Brooklyn.

No one ever found the Ravenite bug, but six days after finding the Bergin bug Gotti and company took "affirmative steps" and rendered useless the bugs they knew were there by installing a "noise generating system," according to court papers.

On Sept. 12, the FBI gave up listening.

Informants told the feds that Gotti was using a hallway behind the club and Cirelli's old apartment for high level conversations with Gravano and LoCascio. The FBI got new court orders and the worm turned.

"The irony is," said one source, "is that they went from an area where they were jamming conversations of 30 to 40 guys all talking at once about a million different things to a soundproof room where they talked about whacking guys."