Today was FBI day as will tomorrow be.
Ex-FBI Agent Robert Fitzpatrick finished up his testimony, retired FBI Agent Joseph L. Kelly began and finished his. The latter testified that he was in the FBI office in Boston between 1972 and 1975, that he knew John Connolly, was on the C-3 organized crime squad with him, and that Connolly carried a lesser case load than the other agents. The reason for that was that Connolly was the informant coordinator for the office.
Kelly said he had informants. He said other agents had informants. No one knew who his informants were, and he didn’t know the identities of other informants. He said there was only one agent in the office who had access to all the informant files. Not just those in the C-3 unit, but thanks to the government’s cross-examination (pointing out the danger of asking a question when you don’t know the answer) we learned he had access to every informant file in the Boston division. That agent was John Connolly.
If the defense’s theory is right, that Connolly was pilfering the information agents were getting from other informants and putting it in Whitey’s informant files, then putting Connolly as informant coordinator was like putting Agent John Morris in charge of a case of wine. Kelly had little else to offer other than he lived in New York and Prosecutor Wyshak and Agent Marra showed up at his house one day in 2006 to interview him
Speaking of the FBI here’s a question for you: in what two ways does FBI Agent Fitzpatrick differ from FBI agents Robert Hanssen, John Connolly and John Morris. You know Hanssen is serving life in prison in ADX Florence Colorado for 15 counts of espionage; Connolly is serving 40 years in prison in Florida for being connected to a murder; and Morris, Connolly’s supervisor, admitted taking bribes and tipping of the gangsters to investigations against them. He avoided prison by cooperating with the government.
Give up?
Fitzpatrick never was accused of committing any crime; and, Fitzpatrick never got any retirement pay. The three agents who committed crimes did.
What’s the lesson from all that? That there is only one real sin for an FBI agent and that is to try to be totally honest. If you see your fellow agent do something wrong and have he guts to speak up, you’ve sealed the edict depriving you of your retirement. Spies working for America against the Russians are murdered by the Russians because Hanssen gave them the spies identity. That is not as bad when it comes to getting retirement as reporting to headquarters that the special agent in charge leaked grand jury minutes to a defense lawyer.
Fitzpatrick is a guy who really loved being an FBI agent and thought his job was to be straight in all things. He rose to become one of two assistant agents in charge in the Boston FBI office, a top ten office. You’d think he would have had learned by that time that you don’t rock the boat. If you do, then everyone else in the boat is going to be unhappy with you so to steady the boat again they will have to jettison you.
Now here’s a puzzling thing in our society, no one likes a boat rocker like Fitzpatrick. We all have an instinctive feeling we have to keep the boss happy to make our own lives happy. If we see something not to our liking we tend to over look it unless it affects us personally. When we see someone upsetting the norm, then we think there’s something wrong with him.
Fitzpatrick is portrayed as a Don Quixote fighting windmills. The media writes about the questions he is asked without providing us with his answers. Rather than portraying the man as one who stood up strong, FBI strong, it belittles him. The prosecution unseals a document meant to be kept sealed in order to embarrass him but what it did is embarrass the prosecution for being so tawdry.
Fitzpatrick said he ended up leaving the FBI because he was retaliated against for telling the truth (he was never accused of lying about the SAC); after the prosecution broke the promise of secrecy he said he was retaliated again today in court. Thus will it ever be for those who walk to the beat of different drummer for that drummer may very well lead you to the land of POOF.
Tawdry.
According to Robert Fitzpatrick, child of a large New York orphanage, he accepted one of a few offered scholarships and attended Columbia. He says he began to work at NYPD, was recruited by the FBI and went over there to work. (This information came from a tweet from Shelley Murphy.)
I think of Patty – who I wanted to be when I grew up – and her rant on not using the police as a substitute for a real family. Prescient.
My impression is that the years in Boston broke him.
I would like to know if he really was where he says he was – correct picture or not, signed report or not. That would tell me a lot.
Encouraging people to mock his years of service in the FBI tells me more about those who encourage it than it does about a man who may have served his country honorably. Is it possible he really was and is a fine man?
Because I think I can believe that he went up the chain of command and over to William Weld.
If he didn’t weld would be here to say he didn’t. Wyshak would have him here. Unless ordered not to
Ernie:
I think Weld has already admitted that Fitzpatrick came to him. Not at this trial but elsewhere.
Firefly:
Fitzpatrick truly fell in love with the FBI – he seems to have done some creditable work and arrived in Boston as second in command – Boston did break him because he tried to fight the entrenched interests – Agent Davis testified today that everyone seemed to pay deference to Connolly and Morris as if they were super stars. Fitzpatrick made the mistake to think he was in charge of them when they had cover above Fitzpatrick – it was Morris and is squad that took down Angiulo so they walked with the gliterrati – the type of people you can’t mess with – there’s a lot to find that is good in the man and a lot to wonder about as to his memory of things.
Excellent post. Here’s something else to ponder; Connolly is the informant coordinator for the FBI while his brother James had the same job at DEA Boston. Coincidence?
Notaboyo:
The sins of one brother do not fall on the other.
Your right but it may have been easy for John Connolly to get others information from his brother and credit it to Whitey to fill the CI file.