NPC member Gryta gets first book published on secret Mafia surveillance unit

Matt Gryta, a National Press Club member and staff reporter for The Buffalo News, has just gotten his first book, The Real Teflon Don, published through Casanova Books and Amazon.com.

The book discloses for the first time ever the existence of a New York State Police unit that secretly wiretapped Stefano Magadinno, one of the founders of the American Mafia -- La Cosa Nostra -- and his top aides from 1964 until it was abruptly shut down in 1972 amid Congressional anger over Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.

After finding problems as a first time non-fiction book writer trying to get his manuscript published, even having his own bosses at The Buffalo News ignore his offer to pay for the right to use News photographs in the book, Gryta finally convinced James Ostrowski, a well-known Buffalo lawyer, writer and owner of Cazenovia Books, to publish his first book through Amazon.com.

A Western New York journalist for over four decades, Gryta was editor-in-chief of the Buffalo State College RECORD his sophomore and senior years there in the late 1960s. A Buffalo News staffer since May 1969, Gryta was later named a U.S. Army war correspondent in Vietnam and as a sergeant was put in charge of the reporters and photographers in the Public Information Office of the Americal Division. Since September 2011 he has worked as the night police reporter for The Buffalo News.