The FBI and I: A Long Trek Over The Past (5 of 7)

I never suggested the FBI be abolished. I suggested it change. I believed if it shared better we could do better work cooperatively. I wrote out my suggestions for this in my book. I had fifteen of what I called humble suggestions. They were: to record all interviews, if not recorded let the person read the agents report of the interview and make corrections, tighten up control over informants allowed to commit crimes, have independent authority review files on people who have been informants for over a year, institute real punishment for agents who break laws or rules and not promote them; change the culture where the only thing considered as being s true is what the FBI agent writes down in a 302 report; and give the Department of Justice (DOJ) more control.

I went on to advocate that 302 reports about a DOJ attorney must be copied to him or her, ensure necessary reports are filed and discipline supervisors who don’t enforce it, mandatory forfeit of agents pension for serious crimes while an agent, add people from outside at middle levels of management, experiment with new ideas, provide all indicted people with notice of electronic intercepts and whether persons outside FBI were privy to them, require notice to any person whose privacy has been infringed upon, and eliminate the fear of embarrassment.

All my recommendations were made based on my experience dealing with or learning about the FBI. I sought to make it better by changing the claustrophobic J. Edgar Hoover culture that enveloped it. Trump’s cares little about bettering the FBI. He doesn’t want to improve it. He seeks to diminish it. If it would not investigate him or his family he would give it riches beyond its imagination.

It is true I have attacked the FBI in the past because of its actions. That is the reason why I made these proposals that would have eliminated those actions. No human agency is perfect. Accepting that is the first step the FBI can make to better itself. We need the FBI as it is presently constituted; the changes I have suggested are easily accomplished if the FBI has the will to do it.

Problems I have had with the FBI come down to a few relatively large ones that mainly stem out of the Boston office, the office that the House Committee on Government Reform excoriated in its report. Limiting it to the Boston office however is closing one’s eyes to the tight control Washington, DC, the FBI headquarters that used to be referred to by the agents as the Seat of Government, had over all its offices. As in the Agent John Connolly case it walked away from him at the first sign of trouble even though it approved, at least tacitly, of the job he was doing.

That is one of my major problems with the FBI which is its betrayal of John Connolly who is destined to die in prison having been there for 16 years. He was framed by the FBI. Unfortunately, he does not recognize that the FBI was his real enemy.

An ongoing problem I have with the FBI is its use of the Top Echelon Informant program. After Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi were identified as such we were led to believe that the program had stopped in the Boston area. Years later in 2011 we learned from an electronic interception by the Massachusetts state police that an FBI agent had mobster named Mark Rossetti who had done time for armed robber and was suspected of five murders as his top echelon informant. The agent was intercepted telling Rosetti, “my job is to keep you safe.”

“Yuk”, I thought when I learned it, “the FBI lied about stopping what it did with Bulger and Flemmi. It was still protecting murderers who gave them information.” Not only was I upset, so was Congressman Stephen Lynch. He was demanding an answer from the FBI asking why this had happened. After the FBI delayed and stalled Lynch apparently lost interest. He  went on to other things forgetting about it.

17 Comments

  1. MSFREEH IS A FED DISINFORMATION HACK, ALWAYS GUMMING UP THIS AND OTHER SITES CRITICAL OF THE FEDS WITH HER “KENNEDY CONSPIRACY’ ASININITY . . .HER INTENT:TO MAKE IT SEEM THE OTHER CONTRIBUTORS ON THIS SITE ARE AS WACKED OUT CONSPIRACY-NUTTY AS SHE IS

    THE TRUTH HURTS! MSFREEH’S LUNATIC RANTINGS ABOUT 50 YEAR OLD CONSPIRACY THEORIES IS PATHETICALLY DISTRACTING FROM THE REAL DISCOURSE THAT OCCURS ON THIS BLOG.

    • John King McDonald

      Bill C :

      The ” signal” concealed in the Freeh ” white noise ” is usually worth the wait. We are all familiar with Freeh spam , your grousing about it, and Freeh doubling down on it. The fact is that Freeh is a highly amusing bastard who could write himself out of a gunny sack where other blowhards could not write out of the paper bag they carry
      to put over their noses for hissy fits .

      NUANCE !!!

  2. The FBI on July 9 2018

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180706/16313340187/fbi-decides-to-ruin-mans-life-over-nude-photos-his-legal-girlfriend-he-took-seven-years-ago.shtml

    FBI Decides To Ruin A Man’s Life Over Nude Photos Of His Legal Girlfriend He Took Seven Years Ago
    from the government-still-full-of-vindictive-assholes dept

    https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/us/in-150-shootings-the-fbi-deemed-agents-faultless.html

    The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings

    https://www.9news.com/article/news/crime/dancing-fbi-agent-offered-plea-deal-in-club-shooting/73-572427832

    FBI agent still working at the FBI

    Dancing FBI agent offered plea deal in club shooting
    FBI Agent Chase Bishop will consider a plea deal offered by prosecutors in the coming weeks and return to court Aug. 24.
    Author: Kevin Vaughan
    Published: 11:31 AM MDT July 10, 2018
    Updated: 12:04 PM MDT July 10, 2018

  3. Come on boyz and girlz
    let’s help Matt exercise his Demons, eh?

    in other Demology Newes….

    http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-compton-sheriff-shooting-20180710-story.html

    After decades of problems, new allegations surface of a secret clique within L.A. County Sheriff’s Department

    By MAYA LAU and JOEL RUBIN
    JUL 10, 2018 | 5:00 AM

    also see

    https://www.amazon.com/Rearview-Mirror-Looking-Other-Tails/dp/1883955211

    Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails Hardcover – May 1, 2001
    by William W. Turner (Author)
    5.0 out of 5 stars 4 customer reviews
    ISBN-13: 978-1883955212 ISBN-10: 1883955211 Edition: First Edition, First Printing

  4. John King McDonald

    Official policy and unofficial execution.

    This is the murky moral country John Connolly traipsed through for the FBI in Boston for …. brought so … ” Lo, those many years. ”

    Mount Washington is a bitch !!!

    • FBI agents throughout the country managed TEIs . . . the rule was “no violence, no killers” . . .every civilized country’s law enforcement agencies conduct similar programs . . .you turn some bad guys into witnesses against worse bad guys or in order to round up many of them . . .law enforcement needs informers . . . .no respectable human being in law enforcement could “approve” murders . . .

      The fact that the FBI used murderers . . .every made man in the Mafia has committed a murder . . .is zero evidence that the FBI condoned future murders . . .in fact the FBI’s expressed policies required no further “violence” of any kind to become and continue as a TEI . . .

  5. John King McDonald

    ” Unfortunately he does not recognize that the FBI is his real enemy.”

    Hard to believe. He should have realized that from the moment they arrested him. This is an unsettling feature of the Connolly frame. Aside from his observations as to the necessity for Agents to get cheek to jowl with their TEI’S to Emily Rooney on her PBS show ( in the initial flush of his FBI retirement garlanded with roses and appointment as Edison security chief), he has been …. Reticent .. about discussing sources, methods, and parameters regarding murder by TEI’S as tacit approval by superiors of official policy and unofficial … Executions .

    Puzzling !

    • John:

      Good points. Need to be considered in the overall picture. Why as I see it turned a blind eye to the FBI’s involvement in his prosecutions. Didn’t he at one time say they put him the business of dealings with murderers? Why, as you seem to suggest, didn’t he expand on it? Testify as to what his job was. Mystery, or is it?

      • John King McDonald

        Matt:

        It is a mystery .

        Wrapped in a history.

        Enclosed in a muzzle.

      • John King McDonald

        Ok…it is concluded. So, the Salemme case :

        What do you do when you not only probably orchestrated the murder of Steven DiSarro, as Flemmi inevitably did , with cohort, and then the cohort get jammed and a body turns up on Branch Ave. in Providence.

        PROVIDENCE !!!

        You get on the stand and implicate likely principals: the Godfather … Inevitably… being one of them.

        John Connolly was on a Mission to manipulate and control the Mob in Boston. The FBI played favorites and he was the guy very much in favor until bodies started turning up.

        Like Special Ops soldiers in Laos and Cambodia he was official and he was sanctioned, unless things went south.

        They went south. He was disavowed.

        He was subjected, like Jimmy Bulger, to a kangaroo court. It is their Check after all .

        Mate !!!

        • John King McDonald

          * What do you do when you probably orchestrated the murder of Steven DiSarro, as Flemmi inevitably did, with cohort …

        • i REPEAT: JOE PISTONE (“JOHNNY BRASCO”) SAID THAT JOHN CONNOLLY WAS THE ONE MAN PRIMARILY RESPONSIBLE FOR TAKING DOWN THE ENTIRE NEW ENGLAND MAFIA
          JOHN CONNOLLY RETIRED IN 1990 A HIGHLY DECORATED AGENT, ON THE LOWEST RUNG OF THE FBI HIERARCHICAL LADDER.

          THE FIRST BODIES DID NOT TURN UP . . . .THE FIRST TIME BULGER/FLEMMI ET AL GOT “INDICTED” FOR ANY MURDERS . . .WASN’T UNTIL LATE 1990s, about 7-8 years after John Connolly retired.

          It was only then that the DOJ with a push from the Boston Globe and Howie Carr and Alan Dershowitz decided to go after the innocent John Connolly to get Billy Bulger . . . .

          By 1998, the DOJ/FBI had one corrupt FBI agent, who was John Morris, John Connolly’s supervisor . . .John Morris was still withholding evidence three weeks before John Connolly’s trial . . . .the DOJ/FBI let the boss-supervisor who admitted to attempted murder and accepting bribe money from bookies and gangsters to go after the boss-supervisor’s underling, John Connolly, who was innocent and denied all wrong doing.

          Why let the corrupt-attempted murderer boss off the hook to go after his underling? Because the underling wasn’t the target. Bill Bulger was . . .
          Wyshak and Deputized State Cop Foley gave the whole show away after the circus in Miami and during Col/Major Foley’s talk in Somerville . . .get it on youtube

          • John King McDonald

            Bill C.:

            ” The first bodies did not turn up …”

            Again, a sly and underhanded attribution. No one said … Bodies .

            I said that a body turned up on Branch Ave. It was Steven DiSarro’s .

            This is sharp practice as lawyers say. You are not an honest broker of ideas.
            You deliberately misrepresent in order to mislead. In this company that is a cheap suit to be wearing, indeed !!!

            • John King McDonald

              Bill C.:

              In the other example re: John Connolly and ” bodies turning up ” it is indisputable that they did indeed … turn up . And when the cat was out of the bag John was pro-active in a certain amount of documented damage control . He admits this . It is not John Connolly’s ” Character ” that is of moment now. He is in prison. You had ample opportunity to demonstrate against his persecution during the Salemme trial . I did not see you on Northern Ave. when the shooting started. Talk is cheap .

      • It is pure malarkey to say or insinuate the FBI “tacitly approved” or any other ways approved murders. Only those with Flannery O’Connor type “wise blood” would make such asinine statements or insinuations. The implication is the FBI agents themselves condoned murder. Malarkey.!!!!!

        It’s a brand of ignorance by a false sense of “moral superiority.” “I the writer would never condone nor tacitly approve murder, but those FBI agents who lived down the street did condone and tacitly approve murder.” Why? “Because they are morally inferior human beings to me, the writer.”

        The FBI and DOJ did frame and sell out John Connolly and use him as a scapegoat . . .they did the Globe’s bidding and Dershowitz’s bidding in a delusional attempt to get another innocent man: Bill Bulger

        The FBI and DOJ prosecutors flubbed and erred egregiously and big time . . .and it was not because they condoned murder, it was because the prosecuted innocent folks . . .plenty of them . . .and often for political purposes.

        Otherwise, all of Matt’s recommendations are good
        Moreover, the DOJ/FBI never should have had sociopathic serial killers like Flemmi, who blew up a lawyer’s auto amputating his legs, as a TEI . . .some evil psychos killers never should have become TEIs in the first place . . .

        But, Monday Morning Quarterbacking is always easy . . .and it’s especially easy to ascribe with scant or no evidence the evilest of motives to the Game Day Quarterbacks . .

        • John King McDonald

          Bill C. :

          Wise up .

          Your pollyannish mewlings about the incorruptible nature of FBI Agents aside, considering well documented instances of corruption involving murder and sanction of same by CI’s by their FBI handlers ( Rossetti being the latest ) , please distinguish nuance, in statements made, at a level surpassing a college sophomore.

          I claim no “Wise blood” , but I am ” Blood wise. ”

          You are not . Your naivete about John Connolly is staggering.

          Your insistence, on insupportable grounds, that he was a blinkered racehorse on a FBI crazy straw track is desperately illogical and insults the intelligence of many wiser than … GASP … yourself .

          Your Flannery Connor snark is interesting . You read a lot .

          Bill, I have forgotten more about this stuff than you could ever know . In that respect you are out of your league.

          Keep swinging, tiger !!!

          Szzzzzggggeeee

          • John King McDonald

            Bill C:

            ” Because they are morally inferior beings to me, the writer. ‘

            This is not a direct quote of anyone except Mr. Unconscious.

            You ascribe a thought process, fancifully and in the true yellow journalist style , to a person, and then … Quote… them.

            It is an exercise in intellectual vanity. It is a nonsense skip down one of the garden pathways of your horticultural but can’t make her think, Mind. ( Dorothy Parker ) If that helps .

            Psychologically ….. You take ownership of this statement when you enclose it in quotes : ” BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL MORALLY INFERIOR BEINGS TO ME, THE WRITER. ” …… BILL C.

            Your … Unconscious… has spoken … Loudly … As ever … To us .

            It told me nothing I had not figured out some time since !!!