Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the Boston FBI, and a Devil's Deal (55 page)

Through interviews, government records, and sworn testimony, we had ample material from which to reconstruct the history of the Boston FBI’s ties to Bulger and Flemmi. Even so, we attempted during the writing of this book to conduct further interviews with several key persons. Many who have figured in this story were willing to talk to us. Unfortunately, John Connolly, John Morris, Jeremiah O’Sullivan, and Bill Bulger were not, despite our effort to seek their comment about particular events.

We have also relied on a number of other criminal and civil cases. Many of these cases included court-approved taped conversations that became the basis for the dialogue that is reconstructed in the book. The main cases are:

We have also relied on a number of books and articles for information about the Mafia, the FBI, the history of South Boston, the history of Boston, and the use of informants.

Beatty, Jack.
The Rascal King.
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992.

Bulger, William M.
While the Music Lasts: My Life in Politics.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Charns, Alexander.
Cloak and Gavel: FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, Informers, and the Supreme Court.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Gillespie, C. Bancroft.
Illustrated History of South Boston.
South Boston: Inquirer Publishing Co., 1901.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns.
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.

Halberstam, David.
The Fifties.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

Kee, Robert.
Ireland: A History.
Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1982.

Kessler, Ronald.
The FBI.
New York: Pocket Books, 1993.

Lukas, J. Anthony.
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

Maas, Peter.
The Valachi Papers.
New York: Putnam’s, 1968.

MacDonald, Michael Patrick.
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie.
1999. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

Marx, Gary T.
Undercover: Police Surveillance in America.
Berkeley, Calif.: Twentieth Century Fund, 1988.

Neff, James.
Mobbed Up: Jackie Presser’s High-Wire Life in the Teamsters, the Mafia, and the FBI.
Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.

O’Connor, Thomas H.
South Boston: My Home Town.
Boston: Quinlan Press, 1988.

———.
Bible, Brahmins, and Bosses: A Short History of Boston.
Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1991.

———.
Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People.
Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

O’Neill, Gerard, and Dick Lehr.
The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Pileggi, Nicholas.
Wiseguy.
New York: Pocket Books, 1987.

Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell.
Images of America: South Boston.
Dover, N.H.: Aradia Publishing, 1996.

Shannon, William V.
The American Irish: A Political and Social Portrait.
2nd ed. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. First published in 1963.

Sherrill, Robert,
et al.
Investigating the FBI.
Edited by Pat Watters and Stephen Gillers. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1973.

Sullivan, William C., with Bill Brown.
The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.

Ungar, Sanford J.
FBI: An Uncensored Look Behind the Walls.
Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little, Brown & Co., 1975.

Kleinman, David Marc. “Out of the Shadows and into the Files: Who Should Control Informants?”
Police
3, no. 6 (November 1980).

Finally, we would like to point out that a number of myths about Whitey Bulger and the Boston FBI have been in circulation locally for a long time; many of them are examined in this book. These stories were sometimes promoted by a few local writers—perhaps owing to personal relationships, perhaps because it was easier to see the FBI deal in simplified and elementary terms. The reality is far more complex than any gilded version. Fortunately, most Boston journalists and writers who have covered this story did not opt for the easy way out. Most have struggled with the voluminous record now available for public scrutiny. For our part, we have tried our best to be guided by the weight of the evidence—that is, our own interviews and reporting, the sworn testimony, the government records, and the court rulings. If, after all that, we have still erred on occasion in nuance or shading, it was not from any lack of effort to get the story right.

Nearly all of the material came from our own firsthand experiences reporting the initial story in the
Boston Globe
in 1988 disclosing Whitey Bulger’s ties to the FBI and John Connolly. Other material was drawn from Billy Bulger’s memoir
While the Music Lasts: My Life in Politics
and from wiretapped conversations as part of the 1990 indictment of nearly fifty people in a South Boston drug case.

Main sources:
The sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Stephen Flemmi, August 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28, and September 1, 2, and 15, 1998; retired FBI agent H. Paul Rico, January 9, 13, and 14, 1998; retired FBI agent Dennis Condon, May 1, 4, and 5, 1998; on-the-record interviews between retired FBI agent John Connolly and the
Boston Globe
(1998), WBZ-AM Radio (October 27, 1998), WRKO-AM Radio (October 24, 1998),
Boston
magazine (November 1998), and the
Boston Tab
(October 27, 1998).

For other parts of this chapter, particularly for the historical context of the city, busing, and law enforcement, we drew on our own book
The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family
and historian Thomas O’Connor’s
South Boston: My Home Town.

For biographical information on Bulger, we relied on our prior reporting and articles in the
Boston Globe,
published in September 1988 and July 1998.
Globe
columnist Jeff Jacoby’s two columns titled “Busing’s Legacy” (January 6 and 7, 1999) provided a sharp analysis and summary of busing. Information regarding the killing of Tommy King came from the superseding indictment unsealed on September 28, 2000, in
United States v Kevin P. Weeks and Kevin P. O’Neil
, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, criminal docket 99-10371 and from newspaper articles in the
Boston Globe
and
Herald
on September 22, 2000.

We also drew on government documents and FBI reports either in our possession or released as part of the Wolf hearings. In particular, we drew on FBI reports about meetings with Bulger in the early 1970s and with Flemmi during the 1960s, including but not limited to reports released during the Wolf hearings as exhibits 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 95, 97, 215, 217, 219, and 220.

The FBI’s
Manual of Investigative Operations Guidelines
(
MIOG
) and
The Attorney General’s Informant Guidelines
address the rules and regulations regarding the appropriate handling of criminal informants by government agents.

Judge Mark L. Wolf’s ruling of September 15, 1999, pinned down a number of facts about the FBI’s early alliance with Flemmi and Bulger. In particular, it is interesting to note that, under oath, Paul Rico denied calling Flemmi to tip him off to his indictment. But the judge ruled that, based on all the “credible evidence,” Rico’s denial was “not persuasive” (“Memorandum and Order,” p. 95). “Flemmi received a call from Rico,” the judge ruled. Wolf also found that Rico “aided and abetted the unlawful flight of a fugitive, in violation of 18 USC, sects. 1073 and 2” (p. 94).

Interviews:
John Connolly’s 1998 interviews with WBZ-AM Radio and WRKO-AM Radio and with the
Boston Globe
(see main sources for chapter 1).

The biographical sections on William and James Bulger used dozens of background and on-the-record interviews for
Boston Globe
articles on the brothers in 1988 and 1998.

For the history section, we relied on: Michael Patrick MacDonald,
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie;
William V. Shannon,
The American Irish: A Political and Social Portrait;
Thomas H. O’Connor,
Bible, Brahmins, and Bosses: A Short History of Boston, Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People,
and
South Boston: My Home Town;
J. Anthony Lukas,
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families;
Doris Kearns Goodwin,
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga;
Robert Kee,
Ireland: A History;
Jack Beatty,
The Rascal King;
Gerard O’Neill and Dick Lehr,
The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family;
and
Boston Globe
and
Boston Herald
articles about the murder of Donald Killeen, the arrest of Thomas Nee, and William Bulger’s unsuccessful attempt to amend the Massachusetts constitution to allow aid to parochial schools.

FBI records:
Dennis Condon’s reports on unsuccessful efforts to recruit James Bulger as an informant in 1972; John Connolly’s reports on meetings with James Bulger from 1975 to 1980.

Court records:
The sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Dennis Condon, May 1 and 5, 1998; Wolf, “Memorandum and Order.”

Judge Wolf addressed the issue of Stephen Flemmi telling the FBI where Frank Salemme could be found in New York City.

Both Flemmi and [Dennis] Condon deny that Flemmi provided the FBI with information that led to Salemme’s arrest. In the context of all of the credible evidence in this case, it appears that this claim is not correct. In any event, Salemme’s arrest and subsequent prosecution for the Fitzgerald bombing proved to be beneficial to Flemmi. In 1970, Hugh Shields, a codefendant in the Bennett murder case, had been tried and acquitted. In 1973, Salemme was tried on the Fitzgerald bombing charge. Robert Daddeico, who was being protected by the government, was an important witness. Daddeico testified that Salemme had participated in the Fitzgerald bombing. Daddeico claimed, however, that he had lied previously when he had said that Flemmi was also involved. Salemme was convicted and, as a result, spent the next fifteen years in prison (“Memorandum and Order,” pp. 100-101).

Interviews:
Former Norfolk County district attorney William Delahunt, former Norfolk County prosecutor John Kivlan, former Norfolk County prosecutor Matthew Connolly, and a brief interview with former loan company executive Rita Tobias.

Police records:
Written reports of Quincy Police Department detectives on interviews with a waitress on April 22, 1983, about media calls concerning Delahunt, and on May 9, 1983, about a visit she had from Stephen Flemmi. Another Quincy Police Department report on a May 14, 1983, interview with a restaurant chef who was visited by FBI agents.

FBI records:
Several reports in 1976 and 1977 concerning Francis Green’s account of an extortion attempt by James Bulger and others at Green’s restaurant.