Going back to my roots, I thought I would post the introduction to my long-delayed and continuing work in process the book: “Feds, Reds, Blacks and Blues.”
INTRODUCTION:
I never considered myself a writer or historian; but here I am writing about an important part of American history. How I arrived at this point I will explain.
At Boston College I was an indifferent student majoring in accounting doing enough to get by. I then went on to be a Marine officer for three years with my primary job being that of a disbursing officer. After a tour in Japan I was stationed at Beaufort, South Carolina. After I arrived there, I found myself getting very bored living in the bachelor officer quarters. Looking for relief I went into a bookstore and picked up a Dickens novel. I started reading it. Then I read another and other books of fiction and nonfiction. I became addicted to reading often staying up all night doing it. I did so without recognizing that for the first time in my life I was really getting an education.
When I was discharged, I went to law school. I did well because of my newfound interest. I graduated, passed the bar, worked for several years as a defense lawyer and then most of my career as a prosecutor. When I left my prosecutor position, I left everything behind except for one incident that occurred that had left a bitter taste in my mouth. That was the indictment in 1988 of state trooper John Naimovich by federal prosecutors. I never understood why it happened.
One day back in 2002 I was sitting in small restaurant near Boston City Hall with an old neighborhood friend, Brendan Bradley a Boston Police Captain, who used to train with me running the streets of Savin Hill in our combat boots. He asked me if I planned to go to the trial of FBI Agent John Connolly. It was scheduled to start in a week or so. I told him I had not been following it and had no plans to go.
Later that day or the next I thought about his question. I also thought how Connolly, no relation, was an FBI agent involved in the investigation of the state trooper. Perhaps I could learn more about why he was investigated by the FBI which brought about his indictment. I decided to attend the trial. I attended every moment of it thanks to Judge Joseph Tauro who arranged for me to get a seat in the courtroom which was often jam packed.
I did not learn anything more about the issue that brought me there; but I did think that there was something about the trial which seemed to me a little odd. Maybe because I had tried many cases I was sensing that things were not as they appeared. At one point a litigation lawyer sitting next to me perhaps sensing what I felt commented: “Is this thing fixed?”
Connolly would be convicted of some of the lesser offenses; he was sentenced as if he had been convicted of all the offenses including the major ones. He received the maximum possible sentence of ten years which was a nice thank you for his over twenty years as an FBI agent from 1968 to 1990. I supposed it was the right sentence if he were corrupt; perhaps that was what bothered me and that other lawyer was how could he be corrupt when what he was doing was open and notorious in the FBI.
Wasn’t John Connolly doing what the FBI wanted him to do? Was that something that was corrupt? Was this the trial of one agent to cover up the corruptness of the whole group?
Connolly would later be pursued in a Florida state court by the federal prosecutors. Under the guise of a state murder indictment the federal prosecutors took their team and paid witnesses to Florida. They tried him again on the same thing a federal jury in Boston found not proven. He was convicted of murder by gun. There was no evidence he had a gun at the time of the murder; he was in Massachusetts when the murdered occurred. The appeals court upholding his conviction twisted the law so that a person who was cleaning her gun earlier in the day planning on how to smother her spouse that night could be charged with murder by gun. Connolly has been in prison since 2002. As things stand now he will die in prison for doing the job the FBI wanted him to do.
(Continued tomorrow)
Ah! Beaufort. I remember the harbor master, well, saw him last at my trial. He always knew where the cutter was. Hoist the Jolly Roger, lads! Those were the days. If you shot the Mona, it was two weeks sail from Jamaica to Beaufort. Captain Madman always liked to roll on the cusp of hurricane season, said the cutter couldn’t pull you over in high seas. They’d just hail, and, let him pass. He had a 43 footer called “Details” and, he could drive it anywhere there was water. Miss spent youth, I loved you so.
A clip from Dylan Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night; Rage, Rage against the Dying of the Light.
. . . .”Wild Men, who caught and sang the sun in flight
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night
“Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. . . .”
“
FBI agent Connolly wasn’t corrupt. He was framed and the judges and prosecutors who handled his cases were corrupt. Roger Stone was recently convicted in a trial where the judge was a former Obama Administration official and the jury foreperson was a Democratic party activist who had negative opinions of Trump. She was not independent, neutral or impartial. She was not an independent or indifferent juror. She never should have sat. The judge and juror in the Stone case should be investigated. Stone should get a new trial with an honest judge and fair jury. 2.The answer to the question posed by the lawyer ” Is this fixed” is yes. Naimovich was unjustly prosecuted. The Norfolk D A was improperly investigated by the FBI. They had an animus for the FBI. Tauro’s son worked for the Norfolk D A. He never should have sat on the Connolly trial. He was not an impartial jurist. He had an agenda. His close friend Earl Cooley had been threatened by Whitey so he was out to get Whitey’s handler. Connolly was convicted of absolutely trivia ( writing a letter to a judge, talking to a lawyer, lying to the FBI) A fair penalty would have been three months not ten years. The title of your book should be Mafia Court because the Feds in Boston were doing the Mafia’s bidding. There was a great line in the Godfather movie. Michael said “We’ve got newspaper men on the payroll” and all the gangsters nod. The Globe and Herald were shilling for LCN. Only Will McDonough told the truth. 3. The entire Connolly trial was a sham. It wasn’t about him but was an attempt to get Sen. Bulger. Connolly was supposed to lie about Sen. Bulger but he was honest. If Connolly said Bulger took money from his brother then Connolly would not have to serve any time. But he refused to lie. Stone was in the same position. The prosecutors wanted him to lie about Trump but he refused to do so. Both honest men suffered the consequences. As President Trump said the leadership of the FBI was scum. The judges and prosecutors who handled the Stone and Connolly cases were totally dishonest and a disgrace to our country. The fix was in.
Matt: one typo: “murdered occurred.” Looking forward to the book.
Good Words, good work. Happy Patriots Day.
Three lighter hearted histories of the universe, written figuratively, elliptically, allusively, literarily, with vigor and rigor, but without exactitude (“perfection is the enemy of the good”) in verse and prose, and in both, super-imposition-like, simultaneously at times.
CREATION: (Three views)
1. HER.STORY:
Vibe Spark Light
Star Rock Cool
Pool Cell Flora
Fauna Eve Elves
2. HIS.STORY
In a Nutshell: The Story of the Universe:
In the beginning, sound preceded light: God spoke and everything sprang into existence, even space and time. At the Big Bang, the first SPARK, which occurred @ 14 billion years ago (b.y.a), these elementary particles came first: Quarks (six kinds) and Leptons (six kinds: electrons, muons, tau particles and three neutrinos). The six quarks are also called flavors and they are: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top. “Up and down quarks have the lowest masses; the heavier quarks change into up and down quarks, “particle decay” they say, the transformation from a higher mass state to a lower mass state. Nature, it seems, prefers the low mass over the high mass; stuff builds then decays, every edifice, even cathedrals, even empires. Then after the Quark-Lepton Epoch (which took about a minute), came photons, which appeared at about the same time that quarks were coalescing to form neutrons and protons, the building blocks of atoms. Force particles were probably there from the get-go, too: Higgs Bosons, other Bosons, Gluons (which glue things together, like the supposed Gravitons which seamlessly attract things, it seems.) In the early universe, all these subatomic particles were zooming every which way, hither, thither and yon, randomly, chaotically crisscrossing across the newly created space, like a Jackson Pollack painting, until stuff started to coalesce, coagulate and matter formed; First atoms, then Stars formed about 400 million years after the Big Bang, (@ 13.5 b.y.a.) then our Star and the Rock we call Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, then the oceans formed 4.4. b.y.a., then life (the first cell) formed in some lava pool or mucky bog, sometime about 4.4 to 3.8 b.y.a., for it was then, as Scripture tells us, that the earth was void and dark, but the Holy Spirit came upon the waters, and breathed LIFE upon matter, the second SPARK. Over the next 4 billion years, all LIFE sprung forth: Microbes, Plants, Animals, and us, Homo Sapiens Artiste, the artist, the storyteller. We, human beings, painters on cave walls, carvers of flutes, wonderers about everything and wanderers all over the planet, first appeared on planet Earth, standing upright and proud and humble and awesome and awed, and we were fully conscious spirited artists, artisans, and story-tellers, and we appeared here only about 100,000 years ago. Of course, we evolved. But some SPARK (the third spark), some fire inside us made us different, unique, smarter, more inquisitive, more able, than all other primates, than all other Homos (Neanderthalis wasn’t close, artistically). Adam and Eve were the first (anthropologists can only trace us back to the first 10,000 persons; imagine at one time there were only that few; imagine at one time there were only two) and with Adam and Eve came Elves. Yes, Elves, imaginary little ones and everything else that sprang forth from Mankind’s Inspired Imagination: Stories, Paintings, Music, Dance, Science, Canoes, Arks, all traced back to the “Spirit upon the waters” to a solitary cell in the muck, to the Big Bang, the first spark, the vibe in the void, a voice, an utterance, a thought, a command, ‘Let there be light” and it’s orderly fulfillment with stars and starlets and Nutcracker Suites.
3. Hiss-Story
The serpent, the snake, tempted Eve and she ate the apple; Adam ate too, choosing Eve over Eden. God gave both free wills, and Eve could resist everything but temptation, and Adam everything but Eve. God had a hunch Adam would choose Eve over Paradise on Earth, because God made him a Man, an imperfect human being, who really liked women, not an Angel, and not a snake. Adam chose well, and he chose the good: Eve was good, and purportedly a knock-out, as she’s been portrayed by the best artists among us. What man would not follow her lead, stick by her comely side, chose companionship over solitaire in the garden with snakes?
P.S. Dear Nancy “the Mad-Ripper” Pelosi: Botox has not been invented for the Brain, yet. Till then, retire to an easy chair, a rocker on your back porch, sip tea, watch the sea, nap. You are mucking up the new world order dawning down today with your old-fashioned notions, theatrical hysterics and passe political posturings. Stop gumming up the wheels of progress. Signed, Billy C, just another Savin Hill Billy. P.P.S. Grandma Moses was still vibrantly contributing to the world of art into her late nineties, At 81, Benjamin Zander is still vibrantly leading the Boston Philharmonic and Boston Youth orchestras. Not so, Nancy, who, like Joe, lost it, long ago.
P.P.S. Here’s hoping we all continue on like Grandma Moses, vibrant till one-hundred-one years of age. From Wikipedia: “Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961), known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is often cited as an example of an individual who successfully began a career in the arts at an advanced age.”