The injustice is great in one sense because when Connolly was first prosecuted he was charged with obstructing justice by leaking information about John Callahan. The jury found that not proved.

Here are the facts: . Callahan was a wannabe gangster. A bright guy, a CPA, he had a good legitimate job during the day but notorious friends at night. He got fired from one job as president of World Jai Alai (WJA) because some good work by Connecticut detectives showed he hung around with the low lives including John Martorano’s brother Jimmy, a Mafia guy.

Callahan recognized that WJA was a cash money pit. He wanted to get back into that business. He tried to buy WJA from Roger Wheeler a legit guy and smart businessman out of Oklahoma. They could not agree on terms.

Callahan went to Miami, where WJA is headquartered to meet with John Martorano then a fugitive from justice. Martorano was known as a cold stone sneak murderer of at least 20 people. He bragged how he murdered unarmed people who he felt might be government witnesses against his friends. Imagine what he would do if he knew one was to be a witness against him.

“Heil” some shouted. Many others gave the Nazi straight arm salute. ‘Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark. The haters are coming to town.”

Like Senator Orrin Hatch I had a relative, uncle and Godfather, killed in uniform during the war: James Rogers. Other uncles served in uniform to fight the Nazis with their message of hate. I’m told one of my uncles wrote , “onward to Moscow.”  Did anyone in Trump’s family ever serve? Perhaps that explains his fondness for the Nazis and Putin.

You know that Trump knows how to fire out tweets within minutes at people he doesn’t like. A CEO tweets a resignation from one of his boards and within an hour he’s tweeting back saying the CEO’s pharmacy company is ripping off  people. I’m sure all will agree he’s quick on the tweeter.

Except when it came to the Nazis. I use the generic term Nazis to cover all those like the KKK, white supremacist group, and other so-called alt-right who gathered in Charlottesville Friday August 11, 2017, and the Saturday next, for the ostensible purpose of protesting the removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee.

What is so strange about John Connolly spending 37 years in prison aside from the fact what he was alleged to have done was what the FBI wanted him to do is that the crime for which he is doing time is one which a jury found he had no involvement in.

What is even stranger is that neither John Connolly nor his FBI supporters will accept that it was the FBI that turned on Connolly. Connolly and the others seemed to believe it was the Justice Department in the form of some people in Washington D.C. and others in the Boston U.S. attorney’s office.

Why didn’t they look at the prosecuting table in the courtroom and see that the FBI had its representative sitting there in the person of Special Agent Gary Bald? Were they unaware of the parade of FBI witnesses who testified against Connolly during the trial who were specially assigned to Boston? Do they excuse them because they were “just doing their jobs.” But that’s exactly what Connolly was doing when the FBI turned on him.

NC wrote in and pointed out that there were two FBI agents who did the most in the Boston area to bring down the Mafia. They were John Connolly and Paul Rico. This I knew.

Guess what happened to them. Both were charged with criminal acts based on testimony of those they went after. Rico would be charged with murder, be arrested, and be treated like vermin. He was shipped off to Oklahoma where he died.

Connolly as you know has been in prison since 2002. He can possibly be release when he hits 99-years-old. That’s if he’s lucky. Both men were charged based on people with the morals of a devil who were closely connected with the Mafia.  What is strange about the evidence against them is if it were true the Mafia guys would never have been convicted since they would have blackmailed these agents into silence and backing off at the time. (more on that later)

The one good thing about Trump is that he does remind me of the days in Old Harbor Village. I moved from there when I was ten years-old so I know what I remember are happenings in my very early years.

You know what happened. Trump said “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” He then expanded the line to “fire, fury and frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before” 

Obviously North Korea backed off making threats. Well, that’s not true. It then a couple of hours after Trump’s warning replied:  

“it was “carefully examining” a plan to attack Guam,  . . . Kim Jong-un is weighing up firing intermediate range ballistic missiles at the Micronesian island, situated in the Western Pacific, less than 3000 kilometres north of the Australian coast, according to state-run media. The plan involves creating an “enveloping fire around Guam.”

Trump was in a box. North Korea did exactly what he told it not to so the consequences should have been “fire and fury.” Only it wasn’t. Trump had lost face, again. How would he save it. He resorted to doing the way we did it as kids. We bragged about something else when someone stood up to us.

The result of Flemmi’s testimony that he had been authorized to commit crimes by the FBI agent had the potential to do two compelling things: it would undermine the prosecutor’s case alleging a conspiracy among the gangsters because you cannot conspire with a government agent which Flemmi was alleging that he was; it also brought tremendous embarrassment to the FBI.  As I’ve shown over the years the worst thing an FBI agent can do, even worse than being a spy for an enemy, is to embarrass the FBI. (See book: “Don’t Embarrass the Family.”) 

The prosecutor believed he had to come up with testimony to counter Flemmi’s allegation. He had two choices: retired agent John Connolly or his supervisor retired agent John Morris. Both men had contact with Whitey and Flemmi.

During 1988 Morris had been the source for the Boston Globe. He was wrongfully providing information in an investigation dubbed the 75 State Street case. Having been taking money and other bennies from Whitey over the years he feared exposure. Perhaps Whity was recording the bribery.  He came up with a plan. He would violate his FBI obligation to keep the identity of an informant secret and disclose to the Globe that Whitey was an informant. He hoped that by publicly disclosing Whitey was an informant Whitey would get whacked (murdered) by the Mafia. Then his  taking money from Whitey would not be discovered. (He’d also admit taking money from another TEI.)

As I said I am not a John Connolly supporter which based on my reasoning also makes me not a supportive of the FBI because of this dastardly program which is known to exist by all the FBI agents. The tragic happening to John Connolly should be a warning to all FBI agents engaged in the program that they are playing with fire. For nothing John Connolly did (even assuming that those who testified against him were telling the truth which I do not believe for one minute but to tell this tragic story I must) was not part of what he was supposed to have done as an FBI agent. It was his job under the program to use both Bulger and Flemmi as informants and gain information from them so that the FBI could go after others.

There is little doubt they provided him information. Its worth may be questioned by some but it is clear at a minimum that they gave him the interior setup of Gerry Angiulo’s Mafia headquarters so the FBI could plant a bug and aided them in their investigation of Vanessa’s in the Prudential Building and the recording of a Mafia induction ceremony. Each of these thrust a dagger into the Mafia’s attempt to survive.

To sentence a man to die in prison for something that the federal government gave him permission to do and for something others in his position routinely do is plainly a huge miscarriage of justice. In a Florida prison a retired FBI agent named John Connolly is looking forward to dying behind the walls. Like one of the persons who landed him there, James “Whitey” Bulger, he will leave prison being carried on a stretcher outside to a hearse.

His is a voice crying in the wilderness for justice. His voice is being drowned out by the voices of evil men who wish to have him silenced. It is being drowned out by legal officials about whom G.K. Chesterton had this to say: “not that they are wicked (some of them are good); not that they are stupid (some of them are quite intelligent); it is simply that they have gotten used to it. They simply do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they see only their own workshop.”