Anatomy of An FBI Memo: Why The FBI Has Major Problems Part 1 of 4

FBI files are treacherous and libelous of individuals. They depend on the integrity of the writer who works in a system that values rumor. There is no check on what the author of an FBI 302 or 209. He puts down what he want and it will sit there for years unchallenged. An example of this came up during the period when the FBI was questioning the value of keeping Whitey Bulger as a top echelon informant (TEI): The Special Agent in Charge (SAC) wrote that AUSA O’Sullivan urged him to do so. O’Sullivan years later would deny doing any such thing. In the normal course of things the decision on whether to keep a TEI is strictly an FBI one. The Bureau never reaches out to an AUSA for input. But the SAC needed to cover his butt in making the decision to keep Whitey so he put it on someone else. No one ever checked with that someone else, in this case O’Sullivan, to see if that was true. Many years later when O’Sullivan the head of the Federal Strike Force in Boston learned about it he was furious. He said he feared the FBI ;and one reason was situations like this where they can create a make believe world to protect itself.

Another example of this was when the Massachusetts State police were trying to find out why an electronic investigation against Whitey had been compromised. Talk was about that they were going to ask for a grand jury to investigate it. The attorney general at the time was Bellotti. The investigation had been compromised because the FBI tipped off the gangsters. FBI Agent John Connolly fearing that might be learned wrote a 302 saying the purpose of the investigation was to embarrass the Senate President Bill Bulger and impugned the integrity of Bellotti and others. He also hurt Bill bulger’s reputation by suggesting the rumor out there was he was giving information to Bill about his brother Whitey.

These examples of putting decisions on others or intimating false motive to others are the stock in trade of FBI reports. They are available to others in the FBI and those others form their opinions based on them.

There was one memo that was particularly insidious. It was written by the Boston SAC James F. Ahearn to the Director of the FBI William S. Sessions on February 10, 1989. It was entitled “DEA Boston Investigation of James “Whitey” Bulger.” Note the date, it was within two years of Whitey being terminated as an informant in 1990 when his handler FBI agent John Connolly retired and four years after the time of the last murder attributed to Whitey.

Just keep in mind how much or how little the FBI really knew about Whitey who had been its informant since 1975 at that time. I assume the FBI in protecting him knew nothing about the murders he was alleged to have committed. If the FBI knew so little about the alleged 20 murders why would anyone else know about them. How then take a person like Catherine Greig and send her to prison for eight years assuming she knew about his murders when she fled with him from Boston in 1994. It is absurd to think Whitey was going around telling people about them.

Also try to figure out how we are supposed to believe he terrorized the city of Boston and its surroundings when the FBI knew so little about his activities. From all I have seen that outside of South Boston and the bookies few knew he existed. He was a local depraved criminal with no reach beyond his small world.

14 Comments

  1. With out a doubt the development of counterpoint by Bach
    is what makes his music endure to this day.

    His ability to play themes off each other in the
    low and high registers creating a harmonic whole
    was unrivalled .

    So it has always baffled me why Matt has not scanned the
    FBI surrealscape and looked at other TEI informants
    like Scarpa in New York working with FBI agent Lyndley
    DeVechio or TEI informant Frank Varell working for
    FBI legend Oliver Buck Revell in Dallas.

    A little contrapuntas would go a long way in
    understanding the FBI TEI program used in the
    Oklahoma City bombing.
    Was Timothy McVeigh a FBI TEI?
    Google Nichols Potts Trentadue FBI

    Time to study some counterpoint.
    Whaddya say we start with Fux’s Gradus and Parnassum

    In other news

    John Kerry is 100% jewish
    http://winteractionables.com/?p=28999

    • MS:

      Bach was not prevented from developing counterpoint because someone had the counterpoints locked up under lock and chain and refused to let him get at them. So is it with TEIs that you, and I , can name bu a few but the list is int the hundreds (1000s?) and if the procedures for handling them are the same as we’ve ssen in Boston — and you know the procedures vary little across the FBI sphere the horrors that program produced are unimagainable — just like the present day horror of the FBI manipulating its terrorist informants which they may be doing in the same manner as the TEIs. I could and perhaps will tell the story of other TEIs like those you mentioned and Jackie Presser adn an Irish guy working in the Chicago mob. In time, my friend, in time.

      As for Kerry being Jewish that is well known – but so was Madeline Albright – the first woman secretary of state. Consider America’s posture in the world when you realize since 1979 three of the five secretzry of states have been women, two of them black, two with Jewish who only recently discovered their backgrounds,and one of them being a faux Irishman — which must have our Founding Parents rolling over in their graves when they think of how much this bastion of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant privilege has fallen into alien hands.

  2. John King McDonald

    Matt:

    This is self-evident . It does not say more than it can say. He is not however the Anti-Christ . The packaging of Flemmi’s perversity and murder of two young women into the Jimmy Bulger murder portfolio was fantastic, unbelievable, and an affront to one sibling in particular, Billy, because it was so maliciously calculated to deeply humiliate and shame him. As to Jimmy, you give the devil his due, no more and no less. All else is just a sham.

  3. John King McDonald

    ” Every knock a boost ” … James Michael Curley … It is all a nasty game …Jimmy Bulger’s lack of Ego is what enabled his survival. He is a commodity now. For whatever reasons his name is legend and he has broken the surly bonds of a local crowd . Go Sox !!!!!!!!! 🙂

  4. I always refer to the Baseball card stats analogy, James Bulger is not even close to the mvp. I could ramble off 50 other players from his era that dominate him in the criminal department. It’s all about the politician.

  5. John King McDonald

    MTC : Or vice-versa One does imagine . 🙂

  6. John King McDonald

    Wake up boyo 🙂 … You cite the very key to his longevity in a career with a notoriously high attrition rate as sime sort of deficit. He knew how to keep a low profile. He is highly disciplined . He was never flashy. But you do nit need to see the shark to know he haunts the reef.

    As I’ve told you before, you are not the worst guy in the world. However you seem to suffer from a case of ” Whitey Envy .” They know who he is now don’t they. Ah, what price celebrity. He was getting much older and had health issues. So he was brought back. He took his ★ turn. He is now rather comfortably retired at the age of 86. Stick to what and whom you really know. Jimmy Bulger is and has always been a Standup Guy. You are really not expected to know or understand how or why. Water seeks its own level . 🙂

    • John:

      Notorious high attrition rate except when you are working for the federal government and it is protecting you.

  7. You are right. In reality Whitey was a small time local crook. His brief never ran to the North End or East Boston, three miles away. He was never seen at Kaufman’s garage in Brookline. He was important only in a tiny geographical area. 99% of the people in Dorchester couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup in 1995. Fundamentally he was a creation of the media. What the press did in inventing the political genius Dukakis they did to Whitey in the criminal sphere. Gross exaggeration and overstatement. What WMD was in Iraq Whitey was in Boston, a manufactured character. 2. Major reform is needed at the FBI and DOJ. Even with 100 thousand employees they couldn’t stop the terrorist attacks in Boston, NY, DC, Ft. Hood, Chattanooga and in California. How have they done in the drug war? Once they got in bed with the Mafia in the nineties things went from bad to worse. Their alliance with organized crime led to Martorano, Flemmi, Salemme, Limone and others being released from jail. The DOJ, the FBI and the DEA have been abject failures in stopping the heroin trade. Heroin deaths have gone up five fold under the Mafia- DOJ partnership The Iraqi army put up a better fight against ISIS than Federal law enforcement has in the drug arena. 3. But don’t worry Trump will make the FBI great again. They will improve on their 151 for 151 shooting record. Heard Bernie make a speech about police shootings but he never mentioned FBI shootings. Seems he along with the tv networks think they are infallible.

    • NC:

      1. That’s so true – I asked a lot of people I knew from other parts of Boston if they ever heard of Whitey before he was declared by the media public enemy number one and no one did. Remember Billy McDermott the detective from Brookline who testified about taking surveillance photographs of all the wise guys when they were spotted in Brookline – he had Flemmi, Salemme and others but never saw Whitey there. Spoke to a long time Boston police officer who was a captain and asked him how many times he came across Whitey. He said he never saw him. Too bad the media didn’t get a photograph of Whitey driving a tank like it did with Dukakis. He was known in Southie because that’s where he did all his business: he never infiltrated any other legitimate businesses except a small liquor store where he spend a lot of time hanging out and working. He was a local tough with a gun and a reputation. Little more until the media and Wyshak decided to go after Billy.

      2. We are lucky when it comes to terrorism. The great majority of the cases are those where the FBI set them up and provided the undercover agent who provided the plans and the munitions that did not work. I’d feel better if they stopped some type of attack but that does not seem to be the case. I admit that like in Paris and Brussels they are hard to stop but I’m not even sure the FBI knows where to begin if a hard core group of foreign terrorists enter the country. Time will tell but we have to hope our luck keeps running on.

      Do you want to know what is amazing – all the drug activity in South Boston has stopped; all the gaming and extortion has disappeared since Whitey went to prison. Actually since 1994 Southie has been crime free. Yes, the FBI hs done little in the drug war but that’s the DEA fault.

      3. Hoover set the tune – keep repeating you’re the greatest and the chorus will chime in and start believing it. I read over 70% of the American people believe Saddam Hussein directed the 9/11 attacks two years after 9/11. If you understand the nation like Hoover did then you know you can fool all of them almost all of the time.

      • Matt
        Is it remotely possible that part of Whitey Bulger “genius” as a criminal was that he kept an incredible LOW profile? No fancy cars, no fancy suits, not out and about in the flashiest and trendiest nightclubs and restaraunts? That he did more things that local and federal law enforcement were not aware of outside of Southie?