Yesterday I told of how the media wrote about a letter Whitey Bulger intended to send to Father Robert Drinan, S.J. at the time he was dean of Boston College Law School. Dave Boeri of WBUR asks; “How in the world would Drinan be connected to the “habitual criminal?” Don’t you like the word “connected” and the dropping of “Father” in front of Father Drinan’s name.
You see what’s going on. Rather than looking at Whitey as a confused young man in his mid-twenties who was involved in some robberies, Boeri presents him in the light that we know him today, a hardened criminal accused of murdering 19 people. What makes his question even more strange is he had just written in the previous sentence that Fr. Drinan said he had known the family for a long time.
Boeri can’t seem to figure out how Fr. Drinan would know the Bulgers as if it would be so unusual for a Catholic priest to know a Catholic family. Fr. Drinan grew up in Hyde Park and went to Boston College. He became a priest in 1953. There are many ways he could have met the family.
Nor would it be unusual for a priest to try to help a young man in jail, especially one who grew up in a housing project and was reaching out to him. That simple explanation is beyond Boeri because he thinks what we know of Whitey today Fr. Drinan should have known back over fifty-five years ago in 1956. He looks for some darkly suspicious reason to attach to the relationship, a relationship that may or may not have existed.
Boeri suggests Fr. Drinan was connected with Whitey “through a certain Boston College undergraduate [Billy Bulger] who may have been one of Drinan’s favorite students.”
How absurd. Fr. Drinan at the time was dean of BC Law School. He did not teach undergraduates. He was a man with the highest ethics. Yet Boeri wants to suggest he’s involved in some dastardly plot.
Again see what is happening, we’re supposed to see Billy, who in October 1956 is only a junior in college, a poor kid from the projects who interrupted his studies to join the Army from September 1953 to November 1955 to get some assistance from the GI bill so he could continue on, as some powerful prime evil force capable of moving the dean of the law school into an improper relationship with his brother.
In this case there is no evidence Fr. Drinan ever received a letter from Whitey or corresponded with him. But who needs evidence. It’s about Whitey and smearing anyone who may have come near him so don’t let the facts interrupt the fantasies.
Billy is being portrayed as the powerful Senate president even though he’s a junior grind at BC. Dick Lehr inanely adds, “The inference is that it’s through Billy Bulger there’s established a beachhead with Robert Drinan.” I’d really like to understand what that means. Can you figure it out? And Lehr plans to write Whitey’s biography? That book is going to be so one-sided that it won’t stand upright on the shelf. It more correctly should be described as a diatribe rather than a biography.
Boeri then notes nothing in Fr. Drinan’s papers or biography mention either Whitey or Billy. We’re supposed to infer there is some cover-up going on among those Irish guys. Perhaps I should mention to Boeri that Fr. Drinan was dean when I went to BC Law and I spoke to him many times there and afterwards. He never mentioned me in his papers. I wonder if that makes me part of some conspiracy.
The answer to Boeri’s confusion may be that Fr. Drinan had very little to do with them or what he did was no more than he did for hundreds of other people he interacted with. Billy a run of the mill state representative with no power was elected to the state Senate in 1970. Fr. Drinan ran for Congress the same year. He was elected and went to Washington, DC where he served four terms in Congress until Pope John Paul II made him resign. After leaving Congress he spent the rest of his days in Washington, D.C. at Georgetown Law School.
Boeri doesn’t buy that. He has Fr. Drinan and Whitey hooked up in a sinister manner. He goes around asking Fr. Drinan’s former congressional aides, etc., what they thought that Fr. Drinan and Whitey were connected. (Can you imagine his query: “Did you know Drinan helped Whitey run the Winter Hill Gang?”) He reports they “were stunned at the link to Whitey.” Jerome Grossman accepting there is something untoward says, “It’s a complete surprise.”
What’s wrong with these people accepting Boeri’s nonsense? How could anyone be stunned at a priest trying to help a young man in prison for the first time, if it were true? It seems the media has done such a good job at brainwashing the public that the mention of the name “Whitey” causes minds to seize up.
Boeri goes on: “The letter to Drinan closes with the tone of an order being directed to a future subordinate:” Read it and judge for yourself how off base this comment is. It’s a plea for help from a guy trying to adjust to prison life.
Boeri wants us to believe that this 26-year-old bank robber in prison for the first time looks upon a Jesuit priest who is a law school dean as a “future subordinate” he can order around. This is the type of trash writing that people are putting out in the case against Whitey. This is what is now considered objective journalism
Of course Boeri is not alone, the Globe writers Cullen and Murphy write based on this letter that was never sent: “Another influential advocate for Whitey Bulger, helping to ease his stay and win him parole, was the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School and later a Massachusetts congressman. Drinan was Bulger’s prison pen pal, spiritual adviser, and later, parole adviser. Whitey’s brother, William, would later study under Drinan . . . ” Can you believe this? All of the bold material is flat out untrue.
Even if it were true, Whitey of the 1950s is not Whitey of the present time. Keep this in mind in about anything written about Whitey or Billy Bulger or those connected with them. The media is on a mission to destroy them and truth be damned.
When I started this blog I was like most people blindly following the media’s lead. Writing about these events more and more do I see the lopsidedness of the reporting. I now try to bring a non biased view to this case. The mainstream media is so prejudiced and walking in lock-step that it has gone far over the edge. There will be little reported by it about this case that will not be infected by its warped, twisted and wrong views of everything Bulger.
I knew that at one time. I pointed out its reaction to thing that happened during the trial of John Connolly in my book Don’t Embarrass The Family. Now there is no doubt about it. I guess Catholic priests are fair game. The attempt to damage the reputation of this good and highly respected Jesuit priest Reverend Robert F. Drinan, S.J., by trying to hook him into an evil association with Whitey shows the extent of malice possessed by the media. Reader beware!