Author T.J. English’s Ill Advised Foray into the Great Whitey Myth: 3 of 5

English writes, “Bulger’s role in the Boston gang wars became the stuff of legend.” Yet we know Bulger was in prison during the gang war. He refers to the state police as the “Massachusetts State Patrol.” He has FBI agents Rico and Condon approaching Whitey “on numerous occasions” when it was only Condon who interacted with him two or three times setting up a fake informant file; he has Agent Connolly chasing Frank Salemme through the snow in New York City (December 14, 1972) which never happened, and states the hit on Roger Wheeler in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was done by “a hit team [that] had been dispatched from Boston”  when it was done by Martorano and Joe McDonald who were hiding out in Florida.

Some stuff he doesn’t just confuse, he plainly makes up like Black Mass did. He writes: “In a late-night bull session at the downtown FBI office, Morris told Connolly, “John, we got a problem. Brian Halloran has implicated Jim Bulger and Flemmi on the Tulsa murder. We’ve got to head this off at the pass.” “Don’t worry,” said Connolly, “I’ll take care of it.” There is no evidence of that.

He has the FBI using Halloran and then “he was cut loose” and the FBI “spit him back out on the street” and he was “being dumped by the FBI.” All of it untrue. The FBI was talking to him on the day he was killed asking him why he left the safe house they had for him on the Cape and telling him to get out of Boston. He tells us that Halloran was being handled by FBI ASAC Robert Fitzpatrick which is totally wrong His handlers were Special Agents Gerald Montanari, one of the few heroes in this saga, and Leo Brunnick. Later in his book he does a hit job on Bill Bulger but that’s just copy work from Black Mass.

Perpetuating the Whitey myth English writes that in 1974 when Whitey and Flemmi became partners: “Over the next two decades, the duo of Bulger and Flemmi would become one of the most homicidal gangster partnerships in the history of the American underworld.” I’d suggest that a better duo would be John Martorano and Flemmi who probably accounted for over 50 murders and were responsible for the most of the murders attributed to Whitey. Recall, Whitey never murdered anyone by himself. Most of his murders he was with Flemmi or Martorano other than the Halloran and Donohue murders when he was with Pat Nee.

English just added to the hyperbole surrounding Whitey. He was not, as Joe Berlinger, who produced a documentary “Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger,” said  “on top of the Boston underworld for 25 years”  nor was his case as Berlinger also said the “biggest legal proceeding since the 1920 Sacco and Vanzetti trials.” Nor had he and his brother Bill, as Herald Newspaper columnist Howie Carr wrote, ”terrorized and corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century.”

Whitey may have been somewhat more than “and Irish drug–dealer and low life punk from South Boston who was paying the Patriarca’s tribute money to stay in business,” as Mafia boss Phillip Leonetti described him. Although from the Massachusetts State Police surveillance of Whitey’s headquarters at the Lancaster Street garage it was clear the Angiulos would visit there and leave with a brown paper bag giving substance to the allegation Whitey was paying the Mafia to operate. How big is he when he has to do that?

Truth is Whitey fit somewhere in between high level mobster and street level hoodlum. Hyperbole by those who wrote books who needed him to be at the top-level was necessary if they were going to make some money. Jealously was the response by the Mafia who knew he was a small timer. He was not a real top gangster who would have judges on his payroll, taken over legitimate businesses, infiltrated unions and controlled both legal and illegal activities.

 

7 Comments

  1. MSFREEH IS OFF HER ROCKER!

  2. Matt and Bill hit the nail on the head. What the press gave us was Very Fake News. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story is their motto. What a rotten institution the Media is. As a local pol said they are just another business out to make a buck. Ethics in journalism is a fiction. No standards whatsoever.

  3. The evil that men do lives after them, the good oft is interred with their bones.

    Correction: John Connolly did spot Salemme walking down the street in New York City and did give short chase with a fellow FBI agent and apprehend him. It was his arrest of Salemme that got him to choose to relocate to his home office, Boston. I always pictured it occurring in warm weather.

    As widely acclaimed heroic FBI agentJoe Pistone (Donny Brasco) said John Connolly is the man most responsible for taking down the entire New England Mafia. Scores, perhaps over a hundred, of top MAFIA hoods were taken off the streets and prosecuted and imprisoned thanks to John Connolly’s work . . .think of all the lives saved, businesses saved, families saved, when you capture and curtail the criminal activities of so many leading Organized Crime figures. Americans owe thanks to John Connolly, Joe Pistone and all undercover agents and cops who work with dangerous informants (every made man in the Mafia has killed; every major drug dealer is armed and kills at least indirectly through his distribution of lethal heroin/opiates/crack). Via their work with dangerous informants these Agents prevent crime and break up organized crime rings. We owe them a world of thanks.

    Sadly and pathetically, FED prosecutors invented the “rogue agent” story and tried to sell some good agents, like John Connolly, Ring and RICO, down the drain. We know the travesty of justice which befell Rico and John Connolly . . . .the complete corruption of the country’s prosecutorial/judicial systems.

    • Bill C
      How is it possible that Connolly just happened to run into Salemme. Isnt it obvious and irrefutable that Flemmi ratted him out. There is no way it was a coincidence that Connolly ran into him wouldnt you agree?

      • No. John Connolly and another agent were sitting in a coffee-shop type place in New York City when John spotted Salemme walking by on a crowded street . . .John testified he’d known Salemme earlier from photos but also testified, as I was told by someone who was in the courtroom, that he personally had seen Salemme in his younger days at L-Street (gym, bathhouse, hang-out place for thousands; saints and sinners work out, cons, ex-cons, priests and mailmen all play handball there and in other gyms) . . .Both John and the agent with him confirm Salemme’s capture in New York City was a Coincidence . . . .
        I see it happening the way it happened . . . .
        I’ve never read nor heard anything to the contrary . . .read the book RICO which describes Salemme’s capture . . . .et

  4. Shakespeare wrote that the evil men do is left behind, the good is oft interred with their bones. So, the evil done by historical revisionists like English, Carr, Cullen, Lehr, et al (to make $$$, to sell books, to be famous) will be left behind in their fallacious books, as will the highly perjurious testimony of the serial killers Jihadi Jaret Wyshak’s Cohorts used in Boston and Miami.
    Good thing we’ve got some honest men like Matt who know criminal law, who grew up in these neighborhoods of South Boston and Savin Hill, who served in the US Marine Corps, who was on the Law Review at BC Law and practiced (trying cases) as both a defense counsel for 10 years and 25 years as a prosecutor. Matt knows the characters. He knows Whitey’s fiefdom extended from Castle Island to Andrew Square and maybe a few barrooms on Dudley Street and on a one mile stretch of seven mile Dot Ave. Whitey ruled over a few barrooms and extorted money from a few drug dealers, while he ran his bookie, gambling bz. He was small potatoes. No one who was not a drug dealer, racketeer, criminal, was afraid of him.
    His young brother Billy was a lifelong honorable public servant.

    But in today’s slimey world, the character assassins, mud slingers get their say, and everyone else is sidelined, while the FEDs set free serial killers like Martorano, Flemmi, Salemme (initially set free) Weeks and the corrupt attempted murderer Morris with obscenely lenient deals, as they hunt for Big Game, innocent men, Political Foes, like Bill Bulger.

    The Whole FED-MSM Cabal stinks to high heaven . . .English,, Carr, Cullen, Lehr, Wyshak et al among the stinkiest of them.

    • Matt:

      You are obsessed with the unknown and the unknowable. All of your fretting about where The Jimmy stood in relation to Legs Diamond and Al Capone is the stuff of carping harpies sitting on the benches at Castle Island and gossiping about … WHITEY .

      He is hidden to you : Too many people involved ; Too much engaging in criminal conspiracy to conceal murder by too many parties ; Too much– Fog Of Fabulism– by too many writers intent on monetizing a public fascination with matters Bulger ; Too many ” Hit Teams” and not enough
      Hit that’s fit to print . Okie Dokie No-Key . What a bunch !!!