Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the Boston FBI, and a Devil's Deal (61 page)

It is also worth noting that earlier in the FBI investigation of bookmaker John Baharoian and Boston police corruption—well before Morris leaked news of a wiretap in early I988—the FBI had already done Bulger and Flemmi a big favor. A Boston police lieutenant, cooperating with federal investigators, was wearing a wire to obtain incriminating statements by Baharoian and others. Flemmi was also a target. The FBI tipped off Bulger about the body wire, and Bulger warned Flemmi. “He [Bulger] told me that I was targeted by Lieutenant Cox,” Flemmi testified on August 20, 1998, “and he was going to be approaching me at some point.” Flemmi testified that the tip to Bulger came from either Morris or Jim Ring. (Ring strongly denied leaking the information.) Flemmi testified that Bulger and Connolly talked about the wire and that he also later discussed the situation with John Connolly. On September 5, 1986, the police lieutenant taped a conversation he had with Flemmi, but Flemmi knew not to say anything beyond small talk. “We was pre-warned, forewarned.” Flemmi testified that later Connolly happily told him that he’d heard at the office that the tape was “unproductive.” (In an example of how many of these events overlapped, Flemmi was tipped off about the wired-up police lieutenant around the same time that Connolly was calling Bradley of the Boston police to meet about the subpoena to Kevin O’Neil and just as Flemmi was giving information about Vanessa’s.)

In his September 1999 findings of fact, Judge Wolf ruled that Connolly—not Ring or Morris—was the agent leaking information about the Cox wire to Bulger and Flemmi. “Connolly had asked Morris, and perhaps others, whether Cox was ‘wired.’ The court infers that Connolly is the person who told Bulger and Flemmi that Cox was cooperating with the FBI” (p. 297).

Furthermore, the judge ruled, Connolly then tried to cover his tracks by filing false paperwork. At the time Connolly filed an informant “insert” reporting that Flemmi had learned about the Cox wire from a leak at the Boston Police Department. “The court concludes that this insert is another document containing false information in an effort to make it more difficult to discern and demonstrate improper conduct by Connolly” (p. 298).

For the section on the souring relations between Morris and Connolly, we relied on the sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of John Morris, April 27, 1998; 1998 media interviews by John Connolly; Wolf, “Memorandum and Order.”

For the section on the
Globe
’s September 1988 article about Bulger and the FBI,
Globe
interviews with Dennis Condon, Jeremiah T. O’Sullivan, Tom Daly, and Jim Ahearn. During the Wolf hearings, Morris testified extensively about his role in the story (April 27, 28, and 29, 1998). In 1998 Robert Fitzpatrick granted the authors permission to identify him as the second FBI source for the story. We also relied on government documents and FBI reports released during the Wolf hearings as exhibits 42, 85, and 159. The exchange between an undercover DEA agent and dealer Tom Cahill came from a DEA sworn affidavit by DEA agent Bonnie Alexander dated January 17, 1990, and from another sworn Boston police affidavit in February 1989.

For the section on Sue and Joe Murray and the FBI, we relied on the sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of William Weld, May 22, 1998; and FBI agent Ed Clark, June 3, 1998; government documents and FBI reports released during the Wolf hearings as exhibits 147-152, 156, 157, 159, 160.

For the section on Bulger’s trouble at Logan Airport, we relied on the document released during the Wolf hearings as exhibit 154; a
Globe
interview with trooper William Johnson on July 27, I988; and numerous
Globe
and
Herald
articles about Johnson. Regarding the attendance of two retired New York FBI agents at a dinner at Gianturco’s house, we relied on the sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Nick Gianturco, January 15 and April 20, 1998; and reports by the Office of Professional Responsibility of July 1997 interviews with Pistone and Bonavolonta. Regarding the Boston FBI office purchase of Christmas party liquor at Bulger’s liquor mart, we relied on our own interviews and reporting for a
Globe
article on that subject published in October 1990.

Jim Ahearn’s attack on the DEA and defense of Connolly and Bulger were contained in a letter he wrote to FBI director William Sessions on February 10, 1989 (released during the Wolf hearings as exhibit 126).

In his September 1999 findings of fact, Judge Wolf noted that the Boston FBI office essentially swept Joe Murray’s information under the rug. Murray’s information “implicating Bulger and Flemmi in the Halloran and Barrett murders was not provided to any agents responsible for investigating those matters or indexed so that it could be accessed by such agents. . . . Accordingly, Murray was effectively eliminated as a threat to the symbiotic relationship between the FBI and Bulger and Flemmi” (p. 296). The judge said that even though the FBI characterized Murray’s charge that Connolly and John Newton leaked information as “unsubstantiated . . . [t]he evidence presented in the instant case, however, demonstrates that Murray’s claim was correct” (p. 292).

Trooper Billy Johnson’s career and life spiraled downward in the years following his run-in at Logan Airport with Whitey Bulger. In interviews Johnson blamed Bulger and his politician brother Billy for many of his troubles. Billy Bulger declined comment in articles written about Johnson. But following the incident, airport officials were out to get Johnson’s report, which Johnson viewed as political meddling and payback. Johnson, a Green Beret veteran of Vietnam and decorated state trooper who twice was awarded the Medal of Merit and the Trooper of the Year Award, spoke his mind. Eventually he was reassigned from his plainclothes, anti-drug work inside the terminals to cruising the airport parking lots. Johnson had run-ins with superiors, and he was court-martialed, suspended, and then transferred from Logan. He retired early, a broken man. In the woods of southern New Hampshire, at the age of fifty, he shot and killed himself on September 25, 1998. “Exactly 11 years ago, Billy Johnson’s sense of purpose became entangled in the political riptide of the state police,” wrote columnist Peter Gelzinis in the
Boston Herald
on September 29, 1988, referring to the Logan run-in with Bulger as the beginning of the end of Johnson’s distinguished career. “Outside the Delta terminal, he encountered the foul-mouthed czar of all local thugs, James J. ‘Whitey’ Bulger.”

The book that retired New York FBI agent Jules Bonavolonta eventually wrote, with Brian Duffy, is entitled
The Good Guys: How We Turned the FBI ’Round and Finally Broke the Mob
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

It is worth noting that although Jim Ahearn was shocked and angered about being formally notified of a DEA drug probe of Bulger that had been under way since 1987, the investigation was old news to Connolly, Bulger, and Flemmi. Flemmi testified that the three had been trading notes and information for some time—just as they did in a number of other investigations targeting the gangsters. In testimony Flemmi gave on August 20, 1998, he was asked, “Do you remember having a conversation with Mr. Connolly that related to the DEA investigation?”

FLEMMI: Jim Bulger and I were both present when we discussed that.

Interviews:
Several federal and state prosecutors and Massachusetts State Police officials about assistant U.S. attorneys Fred Wyshak and Brian Kelly; former U.S. attorney A. John Pappalardo about his handling of FBI informant Timothy Connolly; former head of the Massachusetts State Police Charles Henderson on the strategy for targeting James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi.

Court records:
A 1995 court affidavit by FBI agent Edward Quinn on 98 Prince Street tapes concerning the activities of James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi; the government’s post-hearing brief in opposition to defendant’s motion to dismiss indictments and to suppress electronic surveillance evidence, January 29, 1999;
United States v Kevin P. Weeks and Kevin P. O’Neil;
affidavit of Thomas B. Duffy in support of pretrial detention of the defendants Kevin P. Weeks and Kevin P. O’Neil, submitted in November 1999 (see pp. 44-48 for details on the secretly recorded conversation between Weeks and Timothy Connolly about his prospective testimony before a federal grand jury); Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, mortgages on Thomas Cahill’s South Boston property from 1986 to 1994, and the trusts and transactions involved in Stephen Flemmi’s 1992 acquisition of $1.5 million in property; Wolf, “Memorandum and Order.”

Judge Wolf addressed the warning given to James Bulger about Timothy Connolly: “[I]n 1988 or 1989, [John] Connolly told Bulger that Timothy Connolly, who is alleged to have been a victim of extortion in the instant case, was cooperating with the FBI and would attempt to record conversations with Bulger and Flemmi. Bulger shared this warning with Flemmi” (“Memorandum and Order,” p. 310).

News articles: Boston Globe
and
Boston Herald
articles in 1991 and 1995 on Bulger’s share of a $14.3 million lottery ticket;
Globe
and
Herald
articles in 1991, 1992, 1997, and 1998 on the 1989 induction of new Mafia members that was secretly recorded by the FBI;
Globe
and
Herald
articles in 1990 about the arrest of fifty-one men in South Boston on drug charges; a 1993
Globe
article on Flemmi’s purchase of residential property in and around Boston;
Globe
and
Herald
articles in 1993 and 1994 on Howie Winter’s conviction on cocaine charges;
Newark Star Ledger
articles in 1990 on the successful prosecution of Mafia boss John Riggi.

Interviews:
Former federal prosecutor Michael Kendall about the Michael London case; former Massachusetts State Police detective Joseph Saccardo about the surveillance and investigation of Heller’s Café; former head of the Massachusetts State Police Charles Henderson on strategy and cases against Burton “Chico” Krantz; criminal defense attorney Robert Sheketoff on the use of money-laundering charges against bookmakers; several background interviews with Massachusetts State Police and DEA investigators and FBI agents for a 1995
Boston Globe
article about the arrest of Stephen Flemmi; federal courthouse sources about the split between Stephen Flemmi and Frank Salemme.

News articles:
A 1995
Boston Globe
article on how the Bulger and Flemmi investigation came together from 1991 to 1995 and how it came to focus on the extortion of bookmakers;
Globe
and
Herald
articles in 1993, 1994, and 1995 on the indictment, arrest, and conviction of Joseph Yerardi;
Globe
and
Herald
articles in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994 on the state and federal prosecutions of Burton Krantz, James Katz, and George Kaufman;
Globe
and
Herald
articles in 1993 and 1994 in which FBI officials and unnamed officials gave updates on the case building against James Bulger;
Globe
and
Herald
articles on the indictment, escape, and arrest of Frank Salemme.

Court records:
The sworn testimony at the Wolf hearings of Stephen Flemmi, August 20, 21, 24, 25, and 28, and September 1, 1998 (including his account of how Paul Rico arranged for attempted murder charges to be dropped when Flemmi returned from hiding in 1974); John Morris, April, 28, 29, and 30, 1998; and Theresa Stanley, September 17 and 18, 1998; the federal indictments in 1994, 1995, and 1996 against Robert DeLuca, James Bulger, Stephen Flemmi, and Frank Salemme; the court filings in the 1993 federal conviction of Michael London; the 1992 conviction of Vincent Ferrara and others; the 1991 Massachusetts and 1993 federal prosecution of Burton Krantz, James Katz, Vincent Roberto, and others; the 1992 federal indictment of Krantz and Katz and others on money-laundering charges; the 1994 testimony in federal court by state police sergeant Thomas Foley as part of the government’s opposition to having Krantz’s lawyer, Richard Egbert, represent other defendants in the same and related cases; Wolf, “Memorandum and Order.”

Judge Wolf addressed John Connolly’s reliance on FBI contacts for information about the grand jury investigation of Bulger and Flemmi.

Finally, as indicated earlier, members of the Organized Crime Squad kept Connolly advised of at least some developments in the investigation of Flemmi and Bulger that was initiated after Connolly retired. Connolly used that information to honor his promise to protect Bulger and Flemmi. . . . While the United States Attorney could not obtain information that he was seeking from the FBI, Connolly, who was no longer employed by the Bureau, was able to monitor the progress of the grand jury investigation and keep Bulger and Flemmi advised concerning it. . . . Connolly’s enduring relationship with members of the Organized Crime squad gave him access to some information concerning the ongoing investigation of Bulger and Flemmi. As explained below, that information was at times not complete or fully reliable. However, Connolly used the information that he received to honor his promise to protect the sources who had contributed so much to his success. (pp. 26-27, 392-93)

We also relied on Massachusetts criminal offender records for bookmakers Burton Krantz, James Katz, Joseph Yerardi, Richard Brown, Howard Levenson, Edward Lewis, and Mitchell Zuckoff; and the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds on mortgage and foreclosure documents from 1991 to 1994 on property owned by Paul E. and Donna Moore at 1722 State Rd., Plymouth.