Ever since the Brooklyn District Attorney accused a decorated FBI agent of helping his mob informant murder his rivals, there has been much bitter talk about the case. This week, Gang Land heard the worst yet: 

One insider was called “a slime bag.” Another was accused of having “delusions of grandeur.” A third had “radical mood swings.” One was said to be so “dangerous” that the department of Homeland Security had been notified about him. 

But the oddest thing about these nasty attacks is that none of them involve attorneys or investigators on either side of the case. Rather, they emerged from a series of catty emails by three would-be crimebusters who each claim credit for helping assemble the evidence that led to the indictment of former FBI supervisor R. Lindley DeVecchio.

The trio – a pair of writers and a self-styled forensic analyst – have been ripping each other in vicious emails questioning each other’s motives and tactics since the early stages of the investigation, Gang Land has learned.

In some emails, the authors, Peter Lance and Sandra Harmon, and the analyst, Angela Clemente, direct their venom at each other as the grand jury probe was beginning in early 2006. In others, they vent their anger to the assistant district attorney who spearheaded the investigation that led to charges that the former G-man helped his murderous mobster-informer, Gregory Scarpa Sr., kill four victims from 1984 to 1992.

The emails are important – not for their scathing comments – but because they illustrate that the three decidedly pro-prosecution gadflies, who each had

access to DeVecchio’s immunized testimony, were intimately involved with the investigation that led to his indictment in March, 2006. 

The emails demonstrate that by September of 2005, Clemente and Lance (left) had shared information they had obtained about DeVecchio with prosecutors under Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes. They also show that by December 26, Harmon was supplying information to the DA’s office.

At a pre-trial hearing that began yesterday afternoon in Brooklyn Supreme Court, the burden is on Hynes’s office to prove to Judge Gustin Reichbach that prosecutors did not directly, or indirectly, use any immunized testimony by DeVecchio to make their case against the retired agent.

In a January 11, 2006 email to then-prosecutor Noel Downey, written a few days after news stories about the investigation first broke, Clemente warned Downey that both Lance and Harmon “will be damaging” to the investigation.

“Peter is a dangerous person who I have had to report to Homeland Security in the recent past. Be extremely cautious of him,” she wrote in an email to Downey, the former chief of the DA’s Rackets Bureau, according to court papers filed with Reichbach.

In a retort to Downey two hours later, Lance wrote that “a source whom I trust” had alerted him that either Harmon, Clemente or her associate, the late Stephen

Dresch, had been “badmouthing” him. Uncertain about the identity of the culprit, Lance lambasted all three of them as “fringe players,” with a special emphasis on Clemente. (right)

Clemente “exercises radical mood swings” and “utter unpredictability,” wrote Lance, adding that even though he has “wined her and dined her multiple times” and “done my best to understand the demons that haunt her, like many sources she is unpredictable and thus untrustworthy.” 

In a later complaint to Downey about Clemente, Lance reminded Gang Land of the old saw about the pot calling the kettle black. 

“She now appears to be suffuring (sic) from delusions of grandeur” and “preventing me from getting evidence that could be helpful to you,” he wrote, in one of many emails that the beleaguered prosecutor sloughed off, according to the filings. 

Harmon is “also subject to radical mood swings,” said Lance. Her only notice before he “legitimized” her with a mention in his book, “Cover Up,” was as “co-author with Pricilla (sic) Presley of the book, “Elvis and Me,” Lance wrote in a long missive in which he credited his own work with being the basis of the DA’s investigation.

(Lance also expressed displeasure about several Gang Land reports that –

readers will have to trust me on this – had no impact on this column. Anyone seeking to read Lance’s opinions about Gang Land can check out Lance’s website.)

In an earlier email, Harmon (left) – who is currently writing a book with Gregory Scarpa Jr., a likely trial witness against DeVecchio – told Lance that she was working with the DA’s office and had first hand knowledge that “nobody at the DA’s office gives a flying crap” about him or his work.

“I can hardly wait,” she wrote, to complete her book and expose Lance as a self-promoting “slime bag” on radio and TV during her book tour. “I am very attractive and funny and articulate and am just great in the media,” she wrote. 

In several emails, Clemente, whose input in the investigation was praised by Hynes’s chief prosecutor Michael Vecchione at a news conference about the sensational indictment, complained to Downey that Lance was undercutting her investigative work. 

In late January, after Clemente asked Lance to “relax” and let the investigation proceed without his interference, Lance fired off a dismissive 2500-word “cease and desist” reply to her that extolled his own virtues and importance, sending a copy along to Downey asking him to take his side in the escalating feud.  

“Help!” Clemente declared in her retort to Downey. “This guy is highly delusional and I think he actually believes what he is saying,” wrote Clemente, who had the last word in the emails that were obtained by Gang Land. 

Carmine Sessa, the onetime mob consigliere who first blew the whistle on the allegedly corrupt relationship between DeVecchio and Scarpa Sr., is one of several Colombo turncoats who testified before the grand jury that indicted the former G-man.

But trial witness may not be in the offing for the oft-troubled Sessa, who's been treated for depression and suicidal tendencies, and several years ago, was arrested for punching out his wife while living under the auspices of the Witness Protection Program.

Last year, Sessa signed himself out of the federal witness program and law enforcement sources say he hasn’t been seen, or heard from, since.

Some officials have expressed concern over Sessa’s current status but another speculated: “He may have just decided to start fresh somewhere and leave his old life behind.”

Two weeks ago, Gang Land disclosed that 10 years after mob associate Richard Guiga was killed by two cohorts, his loving mother Rosanna would finally be able to give her son a proper burial because authorities learned that his remains were in Potter’s Field. 

In that column, however, Gang Land unintentionally caused Guiga’s long-suffering 74-year-old mother additional grief by reporting that her late husband Sal had disowned her son because of his criminal ways. 

Not true, said Mrs. Guiga, a retired school teacher. “Richie was no angel, but his father loved him dearly. He didn’t like the life Richard chose, and they had father and son arguments, but he never disowned him; he always loved his son,” she said. 

Richard’s body has not yet been exhumed, but based on what FBI agents have told her, Mrs. Guiga expects to bury her son within a month. 

She also lives with confirmation of her worst fears about her son’s death: that his alleged killers, Nicholas (P.J.) Pisciotti and Michael DeMaria, were longtime friends whom she taught in class. 

“I knew it a long time. I don’t want to get into it,” she said. “I had DeMaria and Nicholas  in my class. I taught them how to write and read.”

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do – tells the complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall. Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June 2002. We added a postscript, and with a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.02, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

The best of Gang Land is available in a book store near you. Or you can pick up a copy of "JERRY CAPECI'S Gang Land: Fifteen Years Of Covering The Mafia" at a special low price from the Godfather of online booksellers, Amazon.com.

The 330-page oversized book includes an index and eight pages of photographs. It is sure to contain a few of your favorite columns, as well as some you may have missed during Gang Land's lengthy run that began in 1989 in The New York Daily News and continues today online and in The New York Sun.

The book's 125 columns chronicle the New York Mafia landscape from John Gotti's heyday in 1989 as the swashbuckling Dapper Don to the remarkable day in 2003 when Gotti's longtime rival Vincent (Chin) Gigante gave up his Daffy Don routine and confessed to having put on a crazy act for three decades.

Amazon.com has it in stock for $12.32  – 35% off the $18.95 list price.