The Whitey Myth: Dave Boeri and Dick Lehr’s Attempt to Malign Father Drinan and Bill Bulger 4 of 4

I mention Drinan ran for Congress in 1970. He was elected. He served until 1980. He wanted to continue but the Pope forbid it. Boeri not content with having approached other people then went to a close friend of Drinan’s, Jerome Grossman who first convinced Drinan to run for Congress. He responded to Boeri, “It’s a complete surprise.” Why would it be if it was put into the context of 1956 rather than 2012? Unfortunately, Boeri doesn’t tell us what he said to these people only their reactions.

Boeri then jumps the shark. He has Whitey as the head of a gang bossing Drinan around. He writes: “The letter to Drinan closes with the tone of an order being directed to a future subordinate.” Incredibly  Boeri suggests we are supposed to believe this 27-year-old kid anguishing over the conditions in prison is bossing around the dean of a law school. What did Whitey write that made Boeri conclude that? He wrote: “Well, Father Drinan, that’s about it and it’s the true story seen through my eye. Write me as soon as possible. James J. Bulger 77607” Boeri and Lehr demonstrate how the media can take ordinary acts and build them up into monstrosities.

Boeri was on a role as was Lehr. Boeri suggests that Speaker John McCormack who held that position from 1962 to 1971 was helping out Whitey. Lehr said: “They are fortunate to have access to John McCormack, who has easy access to the director of the entire Federal Prison System.” Lehr went on: “He’s [McCormack] got the director of the Bureau of Prisons practically jumping up and down to check on James ‘Whitey’ Bulger’s status in prison.” Hardly was that the case. Whitey’s letter to a priest was confiscated.

Then ominously Lehr says: “what gets established is John McCormack has an interest in this inmate.” Was McCormack part of the landing party going onto Lehr’s beachhead?  Everything is a total exaggeration.

McCormack did inquire about Whitey’s status at the request of Bill his brother. The last one Boeri  points to is in late 1961 at the start of his speakership. Hardly did McCormack have anyone jumping up and down. After his last call it took four years and three parole hearings before Whitey got paroled in  March 1965.

The hype and nonsensical connections by Boeri and even more so by Lehr clearly show how much of what is written or what we know about Whitey has little connection to reality. We would learn that he was a test subject in prison for experiments on LSD which would have given him some time off his sentence. There is nothing to show that when he got out in 1965 he was extended any extraordinary favors although Boeri made sure to mention he received ten dollars upon being released.

We can also see their attempt to blacken the name of Bill.  His attempts to help his brother while he is in prison are written about as though it was part of some devious plan. Bill did have a plan though. When Whitey got out of prison Bill worked to get him on the straight and narrow.  He was able to get him a job working as a janitor in the Suffolk courthouse. Coincidentally my brother worked with him. He said he showed up and was a good worker.

Boeri noted in his final sentence that Father Drinan who was listed as Whitey’s parole advisor never had to fill that position.  He wrote that he was “spared . . . any future embarrassment. Otherwise “the heroic priest . . . might have had the dishonor of being named to Bulger’s “friends list.”” After casting all sorts of aspersions at Drinan suddenly he becomes heroic. Go figure.

Father Robert Drinan died in January 2007. Both David Boeri and Dick Lehr knew of his reputation and that his life’s actions were beyond reproach.  Why then did they decide to impugn his integrity?  Just like the gangsters they wrote about they talk about a man who has passed away questioning his actions.  Was he just another pawn in their attempt to make Whitey into something that he wasn’t?

I’m still wondering about Lehr’s beachhead?  If you see it let me know.

18 Comments

  1. Good day,
    my name is Larry Margulies, formally Lawrence Yudowitz. My father was director of psychiatry for the dept. of corrections in the early 70’s. Well, he and some others in my family put out a contract on my life, this is certain, and I survived several attempts, unfortunately the hitmen assigned killed a nice lady who came to warn me and also my unborn child at 8 months. Please will you help uncover which Boston persons would have been chosen to handle this contract. As far as I can tell, he may have asked help with the contracf through a former fbi contact or one of his lawyers or his best friend an ex Boston cop. Meanwhile I have posted an ebook to find a way to scare away the assassins.
    sincerely,
    Larry Margulies

  2. John King McDonald

    Abe:

    Is that you tapping on the water pipe again ?

  3. John King McDonald

    Bit a pet, peon ?!?

    ( An extra ” e ” supra )

    # NO IMMORAL ANAGRAMS

  4. John King McDonald

    Bill :

    Too much Whitey noise.

    Not enough signal.

    Work on it.

    Ike

  5. John King McDonald

    Bite a pet , peon !!!

  6. John King McDonald

    Whose morals ?

    That is ever the question, Shoeless Joe Jackson.

    Nope, a bit pete !!!

  7. Yes, I’m persuaded after decades of reading/listening to them that Carr, Cullen, and Lehr are in it for two purposes: FAME and CASH.

    They are not interested in the truth, in telling both sides of a story. Their interest in alternative facts is NIL. As Carr is a cur, Howie Cur, so too all three are yellow dog pseudo-journalists, basically liars, with few moral constraints upon them. They lie affirmatively, face-first, selling bold face lies; they lie by spin and distortions; and they lie by withholding salient facts. Yellow Dogs. They will live in INFAMY.

    David Boeri at times has separated himself from the pack and reported the facts. It was he, and only he in the Boston Media, who repeatedly reported the FACTS that Steve Flemmi for 8 years had been swearing John Connolly was an honest cop and in fact that TWICE under oath Flemmi swore Connolly was honest and never said or did anything intending anyone be harmed.

    Boeri correctly and courageously reported those facts. Courageous because his media cohorts and the FEDs (the Sterns Gang =Sterns, Durham, Wyshak et al) were failing to flag those facts, and in fact were doing their best to bury them from public view as all the Media and FEDs continued their Jihad against John Connolly targeting Bill Bulger et al. Remember, Wyshak knew how Flemmi swore, knew Flemmi and Morris also swore that TEIs annually asserted they’d commit “no violence, no murders”, then Wyshak dragged those men to Miami to sing an entirely different tune: that rather than being warned repeatedly against violence by Connolly, he was green-lighting it . . .the duplicity of Wyshak et al reeks and screeches to HEAVEN for amends, for revenge, for prosecution of the prosecutors . . . .

    2. Now here’s a true story: Around 1968-69, I and six other men (grad students, med/dent/geo) were living in a house in Falls Church, Virginia. Our roomate, Hank Fahey, brought our mutual friend Bobby O’Brien (all three of us born in Southie) to a party at the house. Bobby was then a young labor lawyer and working for Speaker of the House McCormack. Bobby invited me to lunch at Capital Hill (Congressional Cafeteria) and lo and behold for one-half hour we sat down to lunch with the Speaker of the House John McCormack himself and another Congressman.

    What an honor for a 23 year old grad student.

    But here’s the rest of the story, which Cullen and Lehr and the Globe Spotlight Team will soon report. At that luncheon, Bobby and I spent the entire half-hour pleading, then finally convincing the Speaker to exert full federal power to keep Whitey at his janitor’s job. And because of our exertions on Whitey’s behalf, Bobby, Hank and I were all invited subsequently to join the landings at the beachhead at Carson Beach or at L-Street or M-Street or Savin Hill Beach . . . The Speaker told us of his plans and Congress’s plans and Senator Ed Brooke’s plans and President Nixon’s/Governor Reagan’s plans to establish multiple beachheads along the Boston Waterfront to secure Whitey’s stronghold in his kingdom from Andrew Square to Castle Island, and to secure Whitey’s control over the handful of Southie bookies, barrooms and drug-dealers he was fleecing.

    All the while Fred Wyshak was in high school plotting to indict the Probation Officers and anyone else from Southie because of the beating in the schoolyard he took from a small Southie kid after school in a fair fight while Big Freddie, they called him then, was trying to bully the smaller guy, as was his wont.

    • I’m impressed.

    • Hank Fahey?

      Pipe-smoking Hank Fahey? Late of the B C High Science Dept.?

      • my lifelong friend and a guard-tackle on the bc high school football team that produced two Harvard Med Doctors (Skip Sviokla, Steve Ranere), One Harvard PhD School Psychologist (Mike Anananis), and one Harvard Law Man (Paul Saba) . . and three of those guys were on a the team with that great Texan actor which beat Yale – -29-29 . . .along with the kid who caught the tying touchdown (actually they needed the point conversion to tie-win) Pete Varney, who we played against in the summer at the Quincy YMCA Basketball tourneys and who I, just another Savin Hill Billy on the Savin Hill Five, had a tough time covering . . .

        By the way Skip Sviokla courageously wrote a great book: “From Harvard to Hell and Back: A Doctor’s Battle with Opiates” . .Skip’s a practicing psychiatrist, and once specialized in Emergency Medicine as I read the book . . .

        Anyway, that actor ontheir football team was Tommy Lee Jones . . .he and four B.C. High players were on the Harvard Football Squad at one time . . . .

        Skip and Mike were the captains of our team . . .Hank and I were on, as seniors, too

  8. John King McDonald

    You seem to be reading a lot into it, Abe .

    Lehr and Boeri are typical of a well established tradition , now , in the Press , wherein the reporter becomes the star of the plate ; no matter how cheap the dish !!!

    Bon Appetit !!!

  9. “Was he just another pawn in their attempt to make Whitey into something that he wasn’t?”

    No. He was another pawn in their attempt to make themselves look like they were on the inside. “Look at me! I know people! I’m on the A List! I’m privy to stuff you peons can’t even imagine! Don’t even know exists!”

    When I was growing up in Boston we called them self-aggrandizing, blow-hard, asshole, douchebags. Have things changed up there? And if their expose is published at the expense of a dead mans reputation, even better. Then they can get into conflicts, and conflicts sell. They draw crowds, and all these d-bags really want is attention.

  10. John King McDonald

    A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. John McCormack’s nature was a loyal and patriarchal one. There would have been nothing unusual about his throwing his gigantic arm around a fellow South Boston guy down on his luck. In the fishbowl that is Southie, especially back in the day , it is difficult to imagine Speaker McCormack was not well aware of the young man’s plight. Lehr’s embellishments are just that. As are David Boeri’s, a guy who , in other matters has been not quite the shill for the Globies as he was on this matter.

    Again, You have to be careful not to throw out the Jimmy with the Basin of Holy Water on this One .