The F.B.I. – America’s Last or Lost Hope: An Analysis 1 of 4

Those who have been with me for a long time are aware that I have my problems with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I spelled them out in my book Don’t Embarrass the Family. It was due to that book that I started this blog. I’ve never had a problem with any specific FBI agent but with the Bureau’s higher ups.

I believe almost all the FBI agents at the lower levels –  sometimes called brick agents – are honest, courageous, intelligent, loyal Americans doing their best to enforce the laws of the country. I have personally known some, not many, and have always held them in the highest respect and regard. The one fault I found with the agents has been their willingness to follow instructions that come down from the upper ranks of the Bureau.

It is there where I have had my beefs with the FBI. It is almost as if the good guys are content to work hard, get the job done and stay at the lower levels while those who rise to the top aren’t the cream of the crop but those who know how to play the inside game. At one time, when J. Edgar Hoover was around from what all the reading I have done It appeared that those who played up to him advanced to his be his Praetorian Guard. To do this one had to send him cards on his birthday and anniversary, be willing to inform on others, and do everything including up to congratulating him when he sneezed. Hoover surrounded himself with people who sought to get ahead not by hard work but by what we used to call brown-nosing the person above them. Meanwhile those who did the hard work labored on hoping to avoid Hoover’s wrath and scrutiny.

Under Hoover the uppermost commandment in the FBI was: “Thou Shalt Not Embarrass the Bureau.” I had no idea of that when I came up with the title to my book. What caused me to think that an appropriate title was when during the trial of John Connolly the former head of the New England Mafia,  Frank Salemme, testified he told his capos (caporegime)  they could let their men (soldiers) do anything they wanted as long as they did not embarrass the Mafia. When he said that I realized that John Connolly was on trial because he embarrassed the FBI.

The trial was in 2002. Connolly retired to praise in 1990. Connolly’s specialty in the FBI was to flip guys and turn them into informants. He was good at that. He was so good that the FBI had him make a video recording for all agents instructing them how to do it. He started working for the FBI in 1968 and by the time he retired had been able to turn at least ten to twelve high level criminals into Top Level FBI informants. It may be a record for any agent.

These criminal were put into a special program that was developed in the early 1960s under Hoover which is called the Top Echelon Informant (TEI) program.  I’ve always considered its creation a bone headed move. Common sense told me you can’t partner with high level criminals and to do so is a Faustian bargain.

Connolly embarrassed the FBI by being caught doing  what he was supposed to be doing and had been doing for most of his years as a special agent. No one outside the FBI knew he was doing this although some suspected it. In the FBI it was well-known by almost all in the Boston FBI office and the many special agents, supervisors and agents in charge right through the command structure up to the director.

The thing was that the TEI program was supposed to be secret. In 1997 or 1998 hearings were being held in Boston’s federal court on motions filed by several top gangsters who were on trial being charged with racketeering. One of the defendants was a particularly loathsome creature Stephen Flemmi who was a TEI since shortly after the inception of the program in the 1960s. Flemmi was also  in a leadership position in a local criminal organization.

There was little these defendants could do against the charges they faces. It was then with the help of Flemmi they planned to beat the charges. Flemmi would admit that he was a TEI. He would also say that his criminal partner Bulger was also a TEI. He would add that Connolly told him he could do anything he wanted as long as he did not murder anyone.

If Flemmi were to be believed the case against him and his fellow defendants would have to be dismissed.  (cont. tomorrow)

13 Comments

  1. One point: John Connolly’s TEI’s were told “no violence, no murders.” It was the sleaze attempted murder himself John Morris, J.C.’s superior, who translated those explicit instructions given annually as no murders. Of course, Morris on multiple occasions had leaked the names of Top Informants to the Media hoping they would be killed. Why? Then they couldn’t tell anyone that they gave him $7,000 in payments.
    Morris was the real culprit. John Connolly was an innocent man framed to get bigger fish . . . William Bulger, who retired without a blemish on his record.

    Second point. The TEI program, which you did not approve of, we responsible for taking down the entire New England Mafia. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty and cut deals with small hoods to get the Kingpins.

    • Maybe the blanket was too big. I would think that someone like Flemmi would have a specific detail assigned to him. Specific rules for a particularly high level informant.

      What is Morris doing now? Do you know?

  2. FBI ‘offered British spy $50,000 to corroborate his claims in the dirty dossier on Trump – which he never did’
    Claims that FBI offered ex-MI6 spy cash for Trump dirt have re-emerged
    Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein refused to answer when asked in inquiry last week
    Republicans accuse disgraced agent Peter Strzok of using dossier for wiretap
    Strzok texts mention an ‘insurance policy’ in the event of Trump’s election
    Questions over FBI integrity are mounting as Mueller election probe nears end

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5192983/FBI-allegedly-offered-spy-50K-verity-Trump-dossier.html

  3. How the FBI LOST the fingerprints taken from rifle that killed JFK fifteen years after the president was assassinated, new files reveal

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5190201/How-FBI-LOST-fingerprints-JFK-assassins-rifle.html

  4. How FBI agents elect our Presidents
    Part 1 of 4

    Don’ embarass the President called Jimmy
    with a October Suprise

    How FBI agents got Ronald Reagan elected President

    1

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opinion/sunday/reagans-personal-spying-machine.html

    Reagan’s Personal Spying Machine
    Sept. 1, 2012

    IN 1961, when Ronald Reagan was defining himself politically, he warned that if left unchecked, government would become “a Big Brother to us all.” But previously undisclosed F.B.I. records, released to me after a long and costly legal fight under the Freedom of Information Act, present a different side of the man who has come to symbolize the conservative philosophy of less government and greater self-reliance.

    2

    https://www.muckrock.com/project/iran-contra-october-surprise-and-reagans-wrongs-49/

    Iran-Contra, October Surprise and Reagan’s Wrongs
    A look into the wrongdoings of the Reagan administration and campaign, including the October Surprise, Debategate, MCA Records, the Inslaw and Wedtech scandals and the Iran-Contra scandal, which has been called Reagan’s unchecked abuse of Presidential power.
    The Iran-Contra scandal saw Congress’ restrictions on foreign arms sales circumvented by high level politicians, military and intelligence officers who were aided by smugglers and traffickers. Many of the details have never been released. By signing onto a FOIA saying that these documents are in the public interest, you can help change that.

    This project will collect new materials with FOIA and examine them to understand who really did what, who knew what and what their motives were. It will also explore other scandals and allegations involving the Reagan campaign and administration, including the October Surprise, Debategate, Inslaw and Wedtech sandals and the dropped investigation into MCA Records. The goal is to explore history through primary documents, not to demonize or vilify those involved.

    Those involved and investigated include:

    Elliott Abrams – former American diplomat and lawyer who served in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations
    Richard Armitage – 13th United States Deputy Secretary of State at the State Department. He has acknowledged that he publicly released the classified information that Valerie Plame Wilson was a secret agent for the CIA
    George Bush – Vice President, Director of Central Intelligence and President of the United States
    William Casey – Director of Central Intelligence
    Carl Channell – Conservative fund raiser
    Duane Clarridge – Senior operations officer for CIA, head of Latin American division
    Thomas Clines – Senior CIA officer
    Edwin Corr – U.S. Ambassador to several Latin-American nations
    Robert Earl – Marine lieutenant colonel and a deputy to Oliver North at the National Security Agency during the early 1980s.
    Joseph Fernandez – CIA station chief in Costa Rica (operating under the pseudonym Tomás Castillo) and a figure in the Iran-Contra Affair.
    Alan Fiers, Jr. – President Reagan’s Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Central American Task Force from October 1984 until his retirement in 1988.
    Robert Gates – Served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and was Director of Central Intelligence under President George H. W. Bush.
    Clair George – CIA officer in the clandestine service who oversaw all global espionage activities for the agency in the mid-1980s.
    Donald Gregg – worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 31 years. He was a National Security Council advisor (1979–1982) and National Security Advisor to U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush (1982–1989).
    Albert Hakim – Iranian-American businessman and a figure in the Iran-Contra affair who participated in an aerial reconnaissance program run by CIA and Imperial Iranian Air Force from bases inside Iran against the Soviet Union.
    M. Charles Hill – Senior adviser to George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and President Reagan, as well as Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations.
    Edwin Meese III – Served within the Reagan Presidential Transition Team and the Reagan White House, eventually rising to hold the position of Attorney General, from which he resigned while under investigation from a special prosecutor.
    Robert McFarlane – National Security Advisor to President Reagan
    Richard Miller – Communications consultant who helped raise money for the Nicaraguan rebels and plead guilty to a conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
    Oliver North – National Security Council staff member alleged by John Kerry to have created a privatized Contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the Contras, and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the Contras.
    Nicholas Platt – American diplomat to Pakistan, Philippines, Zambia, and as a high level diplomat in Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Japan.
    John Poindexter – Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor for President Reagan, convinced of multiple felonies as a result of Iran-Contra.
    Ronald Reagan – President of the United States
    Donald Regan – President Reagan’s Secretary of the Treasury and White House Chief of Staff
    Richard Secord – Took part in CIA’s secret war in Laos, involved in Iran-Contra and one of its precursors, Operation Tipped Kettle.
    George Shultz – President Reagan’s Secretary of State, known for opposition to the Iran-Contra scandal.
    Paul Thompson – Navy commander who was detailed to the National Security Council staff, military assistant to National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane.
    Caspar Weinberger – President Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, claimed to be opposed to the sale but participated in the transfer of United States Hawk and TOW missiles to Iran during the Iran–Contra affair. He was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, who was Reagan’s vice president during the scandal.

  5. Wa-llahi! All bets against Trump are off. LV won’t take the paper. Hmm… You can place a wager on the date of his natural demise, but, nothing concerning the longevity of his political life. Hmmm…

  6. In 1988, Ron Paul tells William Buckley why we should
    shut down the FBI

    https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2xf7yt/ron_paul_discusses_closing_down_the_cia_and_fbi/

    Saul Alinsky explains how he would close down the FBI
    Alinsky had a Masters in Criminology

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oFa7dJCccHQ

  7. don’t embarrass the voter

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/29/us_voting_machines_hacking/

    It took FBI agents only seconds to hire DEF CON hackers
    after seeing these results

    It took DEF CON hackers minutes to pwn these US voting machines
    We’ve got three years to shore up election security
    By Iain Thomson in San Francisco 29 Jul 2017 at 03:33

    election hacking
    Let’s get this done … Conference attendees open up machines to examine
    DEF CON After the debacle of the 2000 presidential election count, the US invested heavily in electronic voting systems – but not, it seems, the security to protect them.

    This year at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, 30 computer-powered ballot boxes used in American elections were set up in a simulated national White House race – and hackers got to work physically breaking the gear open to find out what was hidden inside.

    In less than 90 minutes, the first cracks in the systems’ defenses started appearing, revealing an embarrassing low level of security. Then one was hacked wirelessly.

    “Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks to the contributions of the hacker community today, we’ve uncovered even more about exactly how,” said Jake Braun, who sold DEF CON founder Jeff Moss on the idea earlier this year.

    “The scary thing is we also know that our foreign adversaries – including Russia, North Korea, Iran – possess the capabilities to hack them too, in the process undermining principles of democracy and threatening our national security.”

    http://www.thelandesreport.com/donsanto.htm
    Why won’t the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate electronic vote fraud? Is it because the DOJ and FBI have long been involved in it, themselves?

    “If you did it right, no one would ever know,” said Craig C. Donsanto, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Election Crimes Branch, Public Integrity Section (from 1970-2010) in a July 4,1989 Los Angeles Timesy article about electronic voting machines and vote fraud.

  8. Once we had a Country and we found it fair.
    Look in the Atlas and you’ll find it there :
    We cannot go there now , my dear ;
    We cannot go there now .

    REFUGEE BLUES W.H.Auden

    • Either have the courage to address directly the problem as you perceive it or do not. If you do address institutional corruption in The Bureau then you cannot hedge with this specious honest and humble brick agent vs. those puissant ” higher ups ,” those Pennsylvania Avenue ” Deep State ” mandarins who compel them .
      It is a false dichotomy. Every FBI agent is a creature of , if not eternity , then at least, Quantico .

      You want to play it safe . I cannot say I blame you .

      The Bureau is monolithic and protean in its machinations both for good and evil . It is , in other words , the power behind the State ; for better or worse .We hear your cavils and disappointments ADA Connolly . We soldier on .

      • As my father told us boys many times; If you have what you consider a problem, either confront it or ignore it. Anything in between is a complete waste.

  9. The election of that perpetually lying, sloth, Donald Chump shattered my faith in the American voter. We have 65 million morons, racists, bigots, or otherwise ignorant people. With all of our other problems, I’m afraid the “American Experiment” is doomed to fail. It is only a matter of when.

  10. “If Flemmi were to be believed the case against him and his fellow defendants would have to be dismissed. ” This strategy preys upon a uniquely American legalism, the Purity of the Temple doctrine which holds that it is better to let a wrongdoer go free than admit tainted evidence. It is also known as the Exclusionary Rule.

    The rest of the world thinks that it is better to prosecute both sets of wrongdoers. In my opinion the rest of the world has the better argument. In America the bureaucracy is protected; elsewhere, the public is protected.

    It is a good example of the way that our country has moved away from being a republic with democratic features towards a tyranny of unaccountable, life term judges. I would posit that such a policy would never have passed the scrutiny of an elected legislature. Which is better, the tangled silver dollar worded wisdom of black robed political appointees or the commonsense of the unwashed masses voting for their lawgivers?