Lazy writing

Another thing I don't get is how naive some of these people who live among these mobsters are to being told certain people have been flipped and gone in the WPP. Even Junior Soprano who was playing Richie Aprile against Tony, later in the show calls him a "rat fuck". Surely in all his wisdom he knows that what is more likely is that Tony got rid of him after telling Tony about Richie moving against him, as that is the most logical explanation for his disappearance.

It's either poor writing and they've made him look dumb, or he's just saying that knowing full well it isn't true. Then again they make others like Jackie Jr and Meadow dumb for believing anything they're told about where people connected to the mob life have gone.

I don't know what the FBI would do but maybe it's lazy writing. When it comes to cops, writers often dumb them down. I was was just getting to this part on my 3rd watch when Dish and HBO had a falling out.

As to the second part they are paranoid and let's face it, people are stupid and believe all sorts of nonsense.

1) The show always made the FBI look incompetent, with this being the most glaring example. Not only would they have someone tailing Adriana the whole time, but they probably wouldn't have let her leave in the first place. Instead of letting her go to Chris, they would have brought in Chris and had her try to flip him there. As far as they knew, he could have killed her right in their apartment, which he almost did.

2) As we saw in Goodfellas, a big part of the life for the families is denial. You enjoy the wealth that comes from what your husband or father does, but you don't ask many questions about it, and convince yourself that they don't do anything "that bad". And whatever explanation they give you about something, you accept, no matter how improbable it might seem, and you continue living the high life. Meadow dealing with Jackie Jrs. funeral is best example of someone being smart enough to see what probably really happened but still keeping up the façade.

the FBI in real life is usually on good terms with mobsters, you see this in the sopranos too, not only that, they can get to cops, tony knows that pussy flipped because he has a cop on the take, and everyone knew that, but it's never beyond the feds to bring someone in and play a tape for them, say "look, someone has flipped, maybe you should too" they took tony in and told him that junior was trying to whack him.

watch a couple of true mob documentaries on youtube, the feds are just an incompetent as mob guys a lot of the time. they couldn't get al capone on actual racketeering charges, just unpaid taxes, they spent over a 100 million in getting gotti and actually broken the law to get him

they knew that adrianna was naive, she was so naive she let all that happen, i mean with a decent lawyer she wouldn't even have gone to jail, it was someone selling drugs in her club. but she was naive, they knew she would come back, the feds used her and abused her. thats what the show was saying, that the feds, the government is just as heartless as the mob. in one of the last scenes in long term parking, they look at each other "she could be in china right now" they know shes dead, but it lasts 2 seconds and then it's "what shall we do about the other thing?" thats the whole point.

I really enjoyed the show but the incompetence of the FBI always bothered me. Particularly when it came to them allowing informants to get "whacked" repeatedly. As the OP states the lack of tails and close monitoring of their informants at all times was absurd. I suppose the audience is just supposed to chalk it up to suspension of disbelief for the sake of suspense & drama.