Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down (22 page)

He apologized profusely, explaining that there had been a bank assault a short time earlier and the blockade represented a “high alert.” After exchanging some light banter and reminiscences we were reminded to “be careful” along the way. I explained to Jane that a bank assault was actually a bank robbery and that we’d better scoot back to Southern Ireland. The irony, of course, was that Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang, the very mugs I was pursuing, had been behind a huge portion of the import of illegal arms to the IRA rebels who had perpetuated the violence and were responsible for holding the entire nation in a grip of fear. The guns loaded in Boston aboard John McIntyre’s
Valhalla
were just one example and not a good one, since they were ultimately confiscated. So you could say even all those miles from Boston, I couldn’t escape the grisly shadow cast by Whitey Bulger.

22

BOSTON, 1985

When I returned to Boston after our honeymoon, one of my major investigations was in progress on Cape Cod. I was in charge of cartel drug cases and one of our informants had alerted us to a major drug buy. During the bust, one of my agents fired a shot at a suspect who ultimately surrendered with no further incident. But anytime an agent discharges a weapon, it’s a serious matter that requires immediate follow-up and investigation.

Even though my plane had barely touched down, SAC Greenleaf, who was at a baseball game, ordered me to take charge of that investigation myself. I told him my doing so could represent a conflict of interest, since I was in charge of the entire case and the shooter was my agent. But Greenleaf persisted, so I agreed to head up the investigation. The agent, James Trout, a fellow military veteran and one of my SWAT team’s most experienced agents, was caught in the crosshairs of a speeding car that was trying to run him over in a getaway situation. Trout immediately fired off several rounds to stop the car. The drugger was then apprehended and arrested without further incident, and we all thought the action commendable. After all, we’d just executed one of the biggest drug busts in New England history, and in the process recovered all of the drugs and money. With a suspect bearing down on him in a van, Agent Trout was well within his rights to fire; in fact, it would’ve been ludicrous to expect him not to, especially when the shot achieved precisely its desired effect of making the suspect surrender. After taking witness statements and interviewing all the principals involved, I filed my report to that effect, fully believing that that would be the end of things, since I’d done all the due diligence required and more. Everyone in the know objectively agreed the agent’s response was appropriate, if not downright heroic.

Except for James Greenleaf, that is. The SAC was still angry over my memo about his alleged disclosure of information to mob attorney Martin Boudreau. He wasn’t about to let go of the Cape Cod incident that had given him the opportunity despite the superlative job done by all the agents involved in the bust, including the shooter. I could only believe that retaliation against me was Greenleaf’s hidden, perhaps only, agenda at this point.

One dark and melancholy day I was advised that charges were being leveled at me for “fictionalizing” reports following the major drug investigation I commanded on the Cape. These charges were based solely on Greenleaf’s insistence that I had gone into my investigation of the “shots-fired” incident with my mind already made up. In retrospect, metaphorically anyway, those shots might just as well have been aimed at me. I would be charged with falsifying reports about the investigation Greenleaf had ordered me to conduct against my objections. I was accused of unreasonably exonerating the shooter, my agent, which was an utterly preposterous allegation to anyone familiar with field operations. But not James Greenleaf.

Ordered to take no action, and having already filed a report I’d been told not to file, I was left to swing in the wind and fend for myself. I was crushed in spirit and beginning to doubt my own sense of right and wrong. In spite of everything, I felt disloyal and dishonorable about reporting the SAC, dirty in a way no shower could relieve. I had taken an oath in the FBI to never lie, to never corrupt, and certainly be duty bound to report those who violated the rules and regulations. After all, as an agent of the FBI my job was to gather evidence and present it for prosecution no matter who the offender was.

I had been struggling with the idea of Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity, the FBI motto, for a considerable time already and the hours spent away on my honeymoon only crystallized the issue further. Having served the government for over twenty-four years now, patriotism and honor were elements of loyalty I took for granted. As a young lad in the Mount, I dreamed about the FBI and idealized how my service might be. Taking my oath of service that day in the Old Post Office was the proudest moment of my life. And my early years progressing through the Bureau did nothing to make me feel any different or dispel my idealism. Even as a “grunt” in those initial stages I accepted decisions as honorable and necessary.

My Boston experience, though, left me questioning the way those kinds of decisions were now being carried out. I no longer took for granted the inherent drive that fidelity and mission were paramount. I no longer took for granted that bravery, going above and beyond, was the proper perspective in every instance. And I no longer took for granted that all agents were loyal and honest; I couldn’t, not after Boston. I was becoming disillusioned but still loved the Bureau too much to recognize it, still believed I could triumph over wrong the same way my radio heroes had in
This Is Your FBI.

In every other investigation in which I was involved, there was never any doubt about what to do or how to resolve these kinds of situations. My job in the Boston office was to command FBI efforts against organized crime, public corruption, and other violations of the law that harmed everyday people, the ones we were sworn to protect. Innocent people. However, when reporting the FBI’s Boston SAC for what I perceived to be a violation, I was told in this case that was not my task. I was effectively shut out of the resulting investigation and could no longer find out what was being done. So in a bizarre and ironic counterpoint, I had become one of the innocents, harmed by the very system to which I had given my professional life. I considered Greenleaf to be a bully in much the same way as the counselors at Mount Loretto who specialized in brutality. Like them, he wielded his power as a weapon, hanging me, in a figurative sense, from the steam pipes.

Later, I became convinced that the investigation of Greenleaf was doomed from the start. The decision to do nothing by HQ caused me to question my own command decisions, and I no longer took for granted the inherent drive that fidelity to the FBI mission was paramount. I had witnessed firsthand truth being trampled in the pursuit of ego by those who were no better than the criminals to whom they owed the measure of their disgrace-marred careers.

The memo I wrote reporting James Greenleaf for allegedly disclosing information is in testimony and evidence at court. And in those moments I understood with a pained, jaundiced clarity why HQ had assigned James Greenleaf to Boston in the first place:

Because they knew everything I was saying about the office was true and Greenleaf was just the man to assure nothing was done about it. Roy McKinnon, the assistant director who assigned me to Boston, was long gone, and the Bureau’s prized Organized Crime section had become inundated by bureaucracy since the appointment of William Webster. The last thing any chief, director, or bureaucrat for that matter wanted to do at this point was upset the applecart. Siding with me, and thus conceding the depths to which the Boston office had sunk, would’ve done that and far more. HQ would side with Greenleaf no matter what because as a matter of convenience it made sense, ignoring clear and evident facts that did not escape the attention of Judge Mark Wolf later in his 1999 landmark decision.

“As described earlier,” Judge Wolf wrote, “in this period the Attorney General’s Guidelines, which had been incorporated in the FBI’s Manual, required that the SAC himself make certain decisions, including, after consultation with the United States Attorney, whether to authorize extraordinary criminal activity involving a ‘serious risk of violence,’ and reviewing all such criminal activity at least every 90 days. Greenleaf’s approach, however, had the practical effect of delegating these responsibilities, among others, to an informant’s handler and his supervisor.”

In other words, to paraphrase the popular cliché, the fox was quite literally left in charge of the henhouse.

But what of Greenleaf’s plight? HQ had placed him in an impossible situation to do their bidding, a fact later borne out in the courtroom of public opinion when his own admissions of laughable inaction and ignorance took the focus off Washington and cast the spotlight solely on him. So in that sense, ironically, Greenleaf was as much of a victim of the system as I was in many respects, his hands tied just as mine were. The difference, of course, was that his toeing the company line allowed him to continue rising through the ranks of the FBI and remain in public servce.

Acting upon my recommendations by doing the right thing would instead have forced the Bureau to embarrass itself. The age-old mantra you will never see written anywhere, but nonetheless is the creed agents live by, had become the means that would assure exactly the opposite. To hear them say it, I was the villain here, the whistle-blower who had lost sight of my duty when duty had been the one determining factor in all my actions. I could’ve backed off, could’ve played their game, and done the job the way they wanted it done instead of the way I’d been sent to Boston to do.

But I didn’t; I couldn’t. I opted to go to war instead, and it was a war I didn’t believe I could win.

PART FOUR

AFTER BOSTON

“Their position was and continues to be adamant that they will not jointly work this case with the FBI.”

On 8/5/80 Colonel O’Donovan, Massachusetts State Police, called and inquired as to whether I would be available to meet with him at 3:30 P.M. at the Brighton, Mass., Ramada Inn. Colonel O’Donovan referred to his conversation with you on 8/4/80 concerning a highly sensitive organized crime investigation being handled by the State Police.

—Internal memorandum from Boston ASAC Weldon Kennedy to SAC Larry Sarhatt on August 6, 1980 (later submitted in court)

23

BOSTON, 1985

That 1980 investigation encompassed the now infamous Lancaster Street Garage incident. Attendees at the meeting, held months before my arrival in Boston, included Newman Flanagan, the district attorney of Suffolk County; Bob Ryan of the Boston Police Department; and Joe Jordan, commissioner of the Boston Police Department. Colonel John O’Donovan, of course, was there, and so was Jeremiah O’Sullivan, head of the Organized Crime Strike Force.

The memorandum went on to say that “approximately one month ago, the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) developed considerable information concerning organized crime activities in the Lancaster Street Garage located on Lancaster Street in Boston, Massachusetts. It was determined through their investigative activities that virtually every organized crime figure in the metropolitan area of Boston, including both LCN and non-LCN (Winter Hill) organized crime figures frequented the premises and it was apparent that a considerable amount of illegal business was being conducted at the garage.

“Pursuant to these investigations,” the report continues, “Colonel O’Donovan met with Jeremiah O’Sullivan, Strike Force, concerning the feasibility of obtaining authorization for an electronic surveillance of the garage. District Attorney Newman Flanagan was brought into the planning stages because of the obvious jurisdiction of state authorities. Conditions imposed by the State Police were that under absolutely no circumstances would they jointly work with the Boston Police Department or the Federal Bureau of Investigation on this matter. O’Sullivan attempted to convince them otherwise, but their position was and continues to be adamant that they will not jointly work this case with the FBI.”

O’Donovan’s reasoning for this was simple: He knew that the targets of his Lancaster Garage investigation, Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, were FBI informants. O’Sullivan knew it, too, and now so did DA Flanagan. MSP had evidence linking Bulger and Flemmi to several murders, including O’Donovan’s own informant Richie Castucci. Castucci, he believed, had been ready to give up Bulger and Flemmi as far back as 1976 when he was murdered thanks to an FBI leak, and the crusty O’Donovan had been steaming about it ever since.

It was this meeting, and its aftermath, that made my coming to Boston as inevitable as it should’ve been unnecessary. Unnecessary, simply because there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind, inside the FBI and out, that as early as the summer of 1980 Bulger and Flemmi were known to be murderers and should have been closed immediately as informants according to FBI rules and regulations. Since the Bureau opted not to do that, they needed cover. They needed someone to run interference for them between the various warring factions and sort through the morass. I was never meant to succeed and wasn’t meant to fail either. No, what HQ hoped was that I could repeat what I’d done in the Miami office—that is, clean up the mess without attracting attention.

Don’t embarrass the Bureau.

I had managed major cases without doing that in Miami and the plan was for me to do the same in Boston. The substance of my similar experience in Miami involved Title III tapes vanishing from an evidence room, only to turn up in one of the supervisor’s desk drawers, and boy, were they explosive! The tapes, as I detailed earlier, indicated that Miami police homicide detectives were being used as hit men against drug couriers in the Miami area. Tom Kelly asked me to review the tapes and, after doing so, I was left with the unmistakable impression that drug cartels had infiltrated the Miami Police Department and, potentially, the FBI.