Author T.J. English’s Ill Advised Foray into the Great Whitey Myth: 4 of 5

After Whitey’s arrest in 2011 English’s interest in the case was again piqued. He decided to make a telephone call to incarcerated FBI agent John Connolly who is doing time on the Florida panhandle having been wrongly convicted of the murder of John Callahan. He persuaded Connolly to speak to him on the telephone. Why Connolly would do this is a mystery because his 2005 book did a real job on him painting him as a little better than the murderous Whitey.

English would write an article based on that conversation. Connolly would end up in solitary confinement for 50 days for breaking prison rules by talking to him. English ended up with a story in Newsweek Magazine.

His last sentence in the story is: “Amid the uncertainty, one thing is clear; as the U.S. Justice Department prepares to put on trial one of the most murderous gangsters in the last half century, it is in no position to claim the moral high ground.” Two mistakes in one sentence: Whitey was far from being “one of the most murderous gangsters” and the Department of Justice (DOJ) had no problem claiming the moral high ground. English because of his recent foray into Boston was totally confused about the DOJ’s involvement in matters.

English’s suggestion that the local federal prosecutors had no right to claim “the moral high ground” is made around the time it would become the drum beat of the defense team. He searches about for a person who will abet him in his attempt to denigrate the DOJ prosecutors. He finds former State Police Colonel Thomas Foley who lamely says: “The DOJ has no appetite for any kind of self-examination.” Foley worked with Wyshak in bringing down Whitey and his crew. Didn’t he understand Wyshak and his  fellow prosecutors are part of the DOJ?

Foley would also write a book. In it he was so enamored of the FBI that he suggested it broke up the 1957 Mafia meeting at Apalachin, New York, which gave lie to J. Edgar Hoover’s expressed belief that there was no national syndicate. That good work was done by the New York State Police as is commonly known.

English to justify his “somewhat is rotten in Denmark” approach takes the DOJ federal cover-up back to the early 1960s by bringing up the Teddy Deegan murder about which he has a dismal understanding. He calls Joe “the Animal” Barboza an FBI Top Echelon Informant (TEI) which he never was. He also says Vincent “Jimmy the Bear” Flemmi, the brother of Steve Flemmi was a TEI with the FBI. That’s highly questionable. The FBI was thinking of making him one after the Deegan murder but it is not clear he ever became one.

English suggests the six defendants in the Deegan murder were prosecuted because the FBI did not want to have it known that their TEIs committed Deegan’s murder. If the guys weren’t TEIs at the time how does that make sense.

Far from hiding Barboza’s involvement in the murder, the FBI flipped him and had him  admit his role. He testified that he was involved. The federal prosecutors had nothing to do with the prosecution. It was tried in Suffolk Superior Court by Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Jack Zalkind. It was a state trial. The FBI had a hand in it because it had turned Barboza into a cooperating witness.

14 Comments

  1. in the final analysis we are only as informed about the FBI as
    the people reporting about FBI misconduct

    in other newes about media misconduct

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0363811197900035

    A quantitative description of FBI public relations
    Author links open overlay panelDirk C.Gibson

    Abstract
    Of all federal government agencies in the U.S. from the 1930’s to the 1980’s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation probably had the most successful media relations program. The Bureau’s leaders seemed to be masters at getting good publicity and avoiding bad.

    By describing a quantitative analysis of the FBI’s publicity over that 50-year period, this article attempts to show why those efforts were so successful. It identifies the themes that typified the verbal component of Bureau publicity, and the broad spectrum of mass communication channels that were tapped.

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10417949409372948

    J. Edgar Hoover’s four‐baggers: An analysis of rhetorical functions
    Dirk Cameron Gibson
    Pages 284-293 | Published online: 01 Apr 2009

    Translator disclaimer
    References Citations Metrics Reprints & Permissions Get access
    Abstract
    This essay uses declassified FBI internal memoranda to study J. Edgar Hoover’s rhetorical behavior. Specifically, it is possible to understand better the administrative and communicative tendencies of the Director through analysis of his hand‐written comments. The unvarnished, completely candid Hoover emerges from these “fourbaggers. “Hoover’s scrawled messages fulfilled twelve basic functions: 1) demands for expedited action, 2) administrative orders, 3) approval of proposed FBI policies, 4) complaining, 5) “no comment” orders, 6) FBI policy proposals, 7) criticism of FBI errors, 8) disapproval of FBI policy proposals, 9) information requests, 10) complaints about criticism, 11) self‐protection, and 12) attacks on critics. Careful analysis of these rhetorical functions reveals four clusters, or groups of functions. These are: 1) self‐protection, 2) retaliation, 3) emotional catharsis, and 4) orders and requests. While these categories are not entirely discrete, and although we cannot precisely understand Hoover’s motives, it is possible to understand both the rhetor and his rhetoric through close consideration of the behavior.

    see

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/153556505?versionId=167349422

    1981, English, Article, Report, Microform edition:
    Hale Boggs on J. Edgar Hoover [microform] : Rhetorical Choice and Political Denunciation / Dirk Gibson.
    Gibson, Dirk.

  2. “flipped” = “turned”

  3. Interesting that Barboza was “flipped” in 1967, the year that Jimmy Bulger started sweeping floors at the Suffolk County Courthouse and promising to “go straight”.

  4. Mart:

    Do you think that in offering Barboza immunity in the Deegan murder that the Feds immunized themselves against a claim that they orchestrated the framing of Louis Greco , a decorated World War Ii Veteran, and the other guys ?!? And do you think, therefore, that there is a general immunity extending to those who do not have the common sense to acknowledge the obvious ?!?

  5. Matt:

    Barboza was a Fed informant. They turned him in 1967. He testified against Raymond Patriarca Sr. and Henry Tameleo. They were both convicted of the murder of a Providence bookie, Henry Marfeo. I believe he also testified against Gerry Angiulo in the murder of Rocco DeSiglio. Angiulo was convicted of that murder.

    Obviously, the hapless Deegan defendants were pawns in the Fed chess game to nail Raymond Patriarca and Gerry Angiulo. A host of other high ranking New England mafiosi went down because of Joseph Barboza. Barboza was well worth protecting and the Feds sure as hell protected him by any means necessary.

    English, essentially, was making just this point.

    You are quibbling . Get to it . What is your point here ?!?

  6. Nomenclature. Barboza was a prize . Didn’t Dennis Condon and another agent guard him on Deer Island or wherever they stashed him because In Town was supposed to have a big price on his head ?

    English did a book on the Westies, I believe, or one in particular, the guy driving the meatwagon. He is considered to have been around the block at least a few times. He does not seem to have committed any crimes worth noting when you consider the group you are … Cullen … from. Really don’t get why you are this invested in the surfeit of WHITEY APOCRYPHA literature generated by a host of writers who, all good qualities considered, had no real skin in the game. Carr being the only exception to this . Churchill said something to the effect that nothing sharpens your senses like being shot at by someone. The only writer, and this is why I cut him a lot of slack , who was genuinely given to fear that he was going to be shot , was Carr. Carr has his own deficits when it comes to accurately rendering certain events. But he is far ahead of all other Bulger chroniclers in actual working knowledge of events and characters .

    • Carr’s hyperfalutin skullduggery disqualifies him from any serious consideration of his writings:
      How Whitey and Billy “Terrorized” Boston for Decades? Be serious.
      Carr is wholly untrustworthy, unbelievable, a classic murderer of reputations, mud-slinging character assassins, whose stock in trade is calumny. Mr. Smear, Mr. Schadenfruede who delights in others’ sufferings, the Maestro of the Death Pool who Mocks the dead and dying, and who mocks Mexican-Americans playing cooka-racha music (you know what I mean; the samba, rumba, music) while he scorns and spews venom from his empty mean-spirited blow hole . . .please don’t hold that low life up for respect . . .he, as said in RICO, is responsible for Rico being falsely prosecuted and dying in an Oklahoma jail, and he too is responsible for the railroading of John Connolly and he too for four decades defamed the Honorable William Bulger and he too continues to defame the Kennedy family that gave THREE SONS (Joe, John, Bobby) in service to America, and their sister Rosemary lost her husband in combat in World War II.

      So, spare us the laurels for a lifelong low life character assassin

      And you can believe Kevin Weeks sat across the street from his house with rifle in hand . . .I don’t . . . .were any bullet casings found, shots fired, any witnesses? . . .I don’t believe Kevin Weeks heard whispers in a closed walk-in beer-case freezer in 1995, either . . .I think Kevin’s a lifelong two-bit hoodlum, accessory to multiple murders, who wants to make himself feel bigger than he is, he’s deceived himself lifelong, he’s part-delusional (b.s., braggaddacio . . .he once told someone he wanted to do something and then deluded himself into thinking he actually did it; he saw 20 Boston Cops names on envelopes and the only name he remembered was wrong) bully boy prevaricator, who’d say anything . . . .especially anything the FEDs wanted to hear to extend the Statue of Limitations . . .

      Carr’s words are not to be respected, not to be trusted. He not only mocks the dead and dying, and delights in others’ sufferings, and kicks folks hardest when they’re down, and befriends serial killers, Carr is one of those men who “laughs at scars” As the Bard said, “They laugh at scars who never felt wounds.”

      Far as I can tell, Carr never spent a day in service to anyone but his own pocketbook. He’s a bad joke, a mocker, small minded, a mouse, a corrupt widget within the machinery of today’s corrupt MSM. Carr, Howie Cur, the yellow dog journalist, Mr. Smear, Mr. Schadenfreude, The Corrupt Widget.

      Pardon my excursion into ad hominem attacks; I always make sure to apologize for the epithets. I do not hate Carr nor his cohorts. I despise the Injustice, Iniquities, Unfairness, Untruthfulness of their ways. It is an illness.

      As I’ve written before, I, Billy C., just another Savin Hill Billy from Savin Hill by the Sea, will continue to take my trusted harpoon to tilt at typhoons while I hunt down the Great Grey Whales of Injustice, Indifference and Illness over the gulf streams of my consciousness across the wild waters of the Western World till Hell freezes over . . .or I’ll man this till and till these soils and sands till the end of time . . .or I’ll carry on till the next Ice Age, or whenever, whichever comes first . . Pancho, my harpoon!

      Peace, to persons of good will; to persons not of good will, Special Forces!

      P.S. I was going to do something else today but I got bogged down researching the skin, the healthy epidermis, and its surface and subcutaneous afflictions.
      You know, spots, bumps, lumps, warts, clogs, tags, wrinkles . . . curves . . .colorations . . .Who knows to where the next thought will lead me or you? We could discover something useful, helpful. Albert Scweitzer the Alsace-German Doctor who espoused Reverence for Life would be proud of us.

      • Bill :

        I say Carr’s OK .

        Enjoy the autumn weather .

        • Bill:

          I have labored diligently to deconstruct Fed fabrications regarding Jimmy Bulger. As they are well aware , I am in a unique position to do so. Whether your obtuseness in this regard is calculated, or your natural disposition, matters not. You are clueless in South Boston.

          The …very worst ….. Soul/Spirit/Character assassinations perpetrated by the Justice Department on the good people of South Boston are the Deborah Hussey and Deborah Davis murders being laid at the feet of South Boston in the person of their delinquent son, Jimmy Bulger. Bulger was not a man who killed women .

          You are in a FUCKING TRANCE, BO !!!!

          Look at these … Absurd … CRAZY TALES the Feds produced.

          YEP, PISSED ME OFF !!!!!!!!!!!

          POLYGRAPHS ALL AROUND EDGAR !!!

          As Faulkner said, The Truth Is Stranger than any fiction.

          And it is !!!

          .

          Carr provided a crucial piece of info that only he and his confidante, Johnny, knew : Johnny Martorano revealed that Steve Flemmi confessed to him over the phone , when the Fed price for the Truth was not yet set, that he did indeed strangle Deb Davis !!!

          The logical corollaries were thus established .

          I will always be aware of just how critical this piece of data was as a …. Key. .. to opening the door that had been welded shut by the Feds during the Bulger trial. And Carr did not have to step up to do this. I am grateful that he did.

          It’s funny, Bill . Language is a rhythmic riddle ceaselessly sounding the truth of the UNCONSCIOUS . This cadenza brought to you by me, btw !!! Your language the other day in a post , where after freely, as wont, you use the plural noun , Bulgers, and expect all to understand that …as you further explained, there is no such entity as … THE BULGERS , is a map easily read by the experienced traveller .

          This is fatuous, vapid, and jejune thinking .

          And really, Bill, when you go on like that it just seems that you take any opportunity you get to EXTOL Billy and DENIGRATE Jimmy . Which is really your disingenuous way of denigrating both Billy and his older brother, Jimmy Bulger .

          Again, enjoy Fall !!!

        • Old Salt :

          As to Week’s account being apocryphal or not , of laying his crooked elbow along the smooth marbled stone and sighting in on Howie Carr and daughter through a sniper scope I will decline to speculate. Only because I like Kevin, and while this anecdote of his is an …. Anecdote for the Pages … we might say, as he was pushing BRUTAL , his stark account of life with lotsa heavy stressors, I do know that he is a very game lad.

          It will be some consolation to you that your literary nemesis, said Carr , shares your view that Kevin invented that account.

          As to murder and dismemberment threats made against him by an overzealous partisan in the Rotary packy , these contemporaneous with Robin Benedict ‘s dismembered remains being liberated from the Dumpster of homicidal Tufts Professor Billy Douglas’s memory, I have no doubt as to a veracious conveyance of fact. The person conveying that threat, and who was unfortunately addressed in a manner anyone who understood his lineage and grain of character would know was Verboten in Boston was … Jack Hynes …. Boston reporter and son of a former Mayor . The Trinity of Terror : Death – Dismemberment – Dumpster . This is what Jack Hynes was asked to relay to Howie Carr .

          Unimpeachably JACK .