GOODFELLAS Di Nero, Gargano (Photo: Getty Images)
It looks like Team America is about to compensate for the loss of Karen Hughes's delicate Texas touch overseas with a heaping helping of mobbed-up New York shiftiness. Radar has learned that New York Republican luminary Charlie Gargano is boasting that he's about to be appointed ambassador to Austria (confirming earlier rumors.)
High-roller Gargano has been swinging his dick around the New York-Washington political axis for decades now, most notably as the dude hitting the switches behind Governor George Pataki's milquetoast veneer. But for all of his years of government service there remains an air of mystery about the back-room operator who is perpetually trailed by a Pig-Pen cloud of subpoenas, scandals, and suspicion.