When you read this report keep in mind that most of the handlers don’t report when their informants are committing crimes and also that the FBI SACs, as we learned Friday from long time secretary,are in the habit of ordering reports that may be embarrassing destroyed. Some of this I talked about in my book, Don’t Embarrass The Family.
Even admitting authorizing 5,600 crimes a year (which probably amount to in actuality tens of thousands) that in itself is a crime wave. These criminals are not only committing the crimes but are not being prosecuted and are protected.
How then can we deny the FBI is not a criminal organization which should be prosecuted under the RICO statute?
USA Today reports: Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who has studied such issues commented on the number of crimes being committed by informants: “I’m sure that if we really knew that number, we would all be shocked.”
Now here’s something readers of this blog should not be surprised about.
“A spokeswoman for the FBI, Denise Ballew, declined to answer questions about the report. . . .”
“USA TODAY asked the FBI for all of the reports it had prepared since 2006, but FBI officials said they could locate only one, which they released after redacting nearly all of the details.”
Then, of course, there is this from a member of Congress who has been waiting for a year for an answer as to why the FBI used a Mafia capo Mark Rossetti suspected of six murders as an informant after they said they discontinued doing those things in 2002.
Representative Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said “This is all being operated clandestinely. Congress doesn’t even have the information,” “I think there’s a problem here, . . . “ Representative Lynch to his credit has sponsored a bill that would require federal agencies to notify lawmakers about the most serious crimes their informants commit. That apparently is going nowhere.
We’ve fallen asleep. The Todashev investigation where he was killed by an FBI agent is coming up on being 3 months old. The FBI has barred Florida from releasing the autopsy report. Here’s a report in May about some information on it. His girlfriend Tatiana Gruzdeva is being held incommunicado in ICE custody.
Can’t you understand how foolish we look in the eyes of the world when we preach to other countries about human rights and a killing takes place by federal agents under the simplest of circumstances to investigate and for all anyone can see there’s a massive coverup going on? Would you as a foreigner looking at America think that things were well when our Congressman can’t get answers from the FBI about a terrorist bombing in America. Are you surprised that Russia gave Edward Snowden temporary asylum for a year? Can’t you hear Vladimir Putin saying to his cohorts: “they kill a Russian citizen who they are supposed to be talking to and cover it up. Can we trust them not to kill Snowden? Do we want his blood to be upon our hands.”
The FBI might not care what the American citizens think. But we American citizens should care what the world thinks of us. What do they think when our FBI aligns itself with criminals? How is it that we’ve let a person like Putin take the high ground? Will any one in the world seriously pay attention to us when we talk about values or will they snicker at us knowing how we let the FBI operate?
New racket?
Disturbing account of civil forfeiture in US. Police can seize anything you’ve got — your cash, your car, even your children — on the most trivial of pretexts. In Tenaha, Texas, it’s enough to have been driving in the wrong lane. “You needn’t be found guilty to have your assets claimed by law enforcement; in some states, suspicion on a par with probable cause is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime, or even be accused of one”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman?currentPage=all
“Revenue gains were staggering. At the Justice Department, proceeds from forfeiture soared from twenty-seven million dollars in 1985 to five hundred and fifty-six million in 1993. (Last year, the department took in nearly $4.2 billion in forfeitures, a record.”
Having helped organize a conference from 1988-2002 that looked at crimes committed by FBI agents I would add that we brought an honor roll list of FBI agents to speak at our conference including FBI Lab whistlblower
Frederick Whitehurst PhD Chemistry/JD see book TAINTING EVIDENCE;
Tyronne Powers PhD see book EYES TO MY SOUL; Suzanne Doucette ; John Ryan; William Turner; Wesley Swearingen see TO KILL A PRESIDENT and FBI SECRETS.Other speakers included Pulitzer Prize winner retired Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan see Break INS DEATH THREATS AND THE FBI ; Professor Charles Schultz; attorney Antonio Silva; attorney William Pepper see ORDERS TO KILL and ACT OF STATE……etc.
I hold an M.A. in Criminology and taught at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I rised my life and the life of my family
to present evidence that FBI agents had assassinated President Kennedy and Martin Luther King; I also presented evidence FBI agents had created the 1993 1st World Trade Center bombing, Oklahoma City bombing;
I presented evidence that FBI agents are engaging in voter fraud at the local , state and national level. One of our speakers attorney Alec Charns discussed his book CLOAK AND GAVEL detailing the evidence for FBI agents rigging the US Supreme Court.You can view some of the material from our conference here http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=29177&p=516462#p516462
Congress will not act against the FBI because they are blackmailed
or elected to Congress through voter fraud. see
DURING WYSHAK’S CLOSING STATEMENT TOMORROW, HE WILL PRETEND TO CHOKE UP AND CRY A MINIMUM OF 2 TIMES
WYSHAK WILL THEN ‘REGAIN HIS COMPOSURE’ ENOUGH TO MAKE A MINIMUM OF 3 TALKING OBJECTIONS DURING THE DEFENSE’S CLOSING ARGUMENT.
WYSHAK WILL ALSO MENTION WILLIAM BULGER A MINIMUM OF 3 TIMES.
DOES ANYBODY WANT TO BET THAT THESE PREDICTIONS WILL COME TRUE?
Patty
I’ll take one unit on the over!
Declan:
Go to site for registering your opinon on Patty’s questions.
Patty:
We’ll see if anyone agrees with you. I’ve given some people a chance to participate in answering your questions.
Patty:
You may have come closest to the actual happening. Your prize is you can sit on the stoop of Kevin Weeks house (you know the address) and listen to Kevin and Pat Nee discourse on the benefits of working with the federals.
Matt, I’ve been yelling about this for months and no one believes me. It’s not only the FBI but the MSP who do the same. I was married to one and I was the victim of their many crimes committed by their Rockland nasty criminal informant. I caught him entering my home and I filed police reports with both Rockland PD and MSP who did nothing. They usually did nothing but when they did something they wrote false police reports. I had to fight to get the reports written or corrected yet no one would question this guy. On one of the reports one of the officers lied and wrote the informant “was not at home” when in fact he was. The officer never even went to his door and his car was there. I won’t get into all the disgusting things this guy did to my daughter and I but I still try to expose him today. When I got close to finding out his real name he and his lady who assisted him couldn’t have moved out of the house faster. I have photos of her packing trash bags and running back and forth to move out. The troopers I know actually instructed the criminal informants commit these abusive crimes.
It’s too bad there aren’t many practicing lawyers like yourself who do not fear these people out there. Get rid of the criminal informants and they’ll be a lot less crime. Alemany was probably one as well! They have many located out of Southie who are all still causing havoc.
Question:
I’d love to know if Alemany was an informant. We’ll probably never know but his history seems to indicate someone was helping out. There are good and bad on every police department. The problem is the good guys are stuck with the bad guys because of the silence they all impose on everyone else. The bad guys drag down everyone’s reputation but the majority of good guys trying to do the job ignore it for to do otherwise will make them into rats and everyone will turn on them. It’s really a horrid situation where one has to do her best and sometimes hold her nose.
A couple of years ago I traveled to Woodstock New York with the Maine artist Robert Shetterly where he was having an opening of some of his portraits at a local gallery. The portraits are part of a series of over 180 portraits he has painted called Americans Who Tell the Truth
Each portrait has a quotation from the person painted inscribed directly on the canvas. One of the portraits being shown at the Woodstock gallery was that of Serpico the Cop who was attending the opening.I had the honor of interviewing Serpico for a documentary I have been shooting about Robert Shetterly since 2006. You can view the portraits here http://americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/frank-serpico
If a cop stands by and does nothing while others abuse the system they’re as guilty as the abuser.
That’s what’s wrong with the system if a cop man’s up and honors his oath he’s a rat when the opposite is true.
Yes bad things happen to honest cops that won’t go along to get along and that’s the problem it’s not limited to the FBI its the rule of law on the MSP, they just haven’t been publicized yet.
We must change the language: Persons who cooperate with law enforcement, cops who tell on corrupt cops, journalists who expose corrupt journalists, politicians who expose corrupt co-workers, lawyers and judges who single out and inform on corrupt co-workers, should be hailed, not denigrated. Notice how the ones who profess the most hate for “informers” are those guilty of the most heinous crimes (Martorano, Weeks, Flemmi, Salemme, Nee, Morris: Wyshak’s witnesses, and Whitey Bulger, C&B’s client). To fully disclose and inform on someone who is contaminating the environment with toxic chemicals is a noble thing and good for society; to stand up and inform on the neighborhood drug dealers or corrupt thieving, lying co-workers should be encouraged and praised, not denounced. It is an old-world venality that says we the people must remain silent in the face of criminal activity. Only the criminals are protected by this code of silence. Speak out against the corruption at all levels of government and outside government. No sacred cows in America!!!! Stop coddling criminals in government, in business, in the private sector and on the streets. Stop the societally suicidal Madness!!!
William:
What you propose is strangely absent from our discourse. All we hear is everyone hates a rat but as you note that is something taught to us by the people who are doing the worst things to our society such as the people you mention.
That is something I want to consider more is when is it good to inform on someone. It’d go something like “it is all right to inform on another when you are not going to receive a personal benefit.” That would take a huge group of people out of the “rat” category because one cop turning in a dirty cop is not doing it for his benefit but for the good of the force. A child coming home and telling his parents that Billy is always torturing Sally is doing it for another’s benefit and not his. We must as a society work on encouraging one type of informing while removing the other type.
Good thoughts.
Notoboyo:
Absolutely right and that is one thing we should urge be changed.
Based on my 26 years as an FBI agent, I would bet there is much less than meets the eye to the report of thousands of “crimes” informants have been authorized to commit.
For example, if an agent sends an “informant” in “wired up” to buy drugs for example, that would be, under other circumstances a “crime.” That authorization has to be documented and is tracked.
While I do not know that this report includes what (at least was) referred to as “authorization for ordinary criminal activity” such as the drug deal I would bet that it does.
Chris:
Thanks for weighing in and thanks for your service to our country. We welcome your comment giving the other side of the picture and examples of the many times the need for criminal activity may be appropriate.
I’ve written here continually that we owe a debt of gratitude to the great majority of the FBI agents who serve honorably and well. I saw three or four of them on the stand this week who represented the FBI we hope that is working for us. But we’ve seen the under belly in this case and it seems that the FBI as an institution is not serving us well. One of the witnesses testified that there were things going on that he didn’t like but to do anything about them he’d have to report them up the chain of command and to do so he felt he’s be putting his job in jeopardy.
I’ve been writing that the Top Echelon Informant program is ill conceived and has proven a disaster in many areas. We’ve seen it in New York and in Boston. We don’t know about other offices since they have not had their files opened like we have had here. Then we have a 2 year old case involving a Mafia capo that the FBI is still investigating, it’s refusal to answer questions relative to the Marathon Terrorist Attack, and the absurd length of time it is taking to investigate the killing of Todashev.
Don’t take my criticism of the FBI as one against the agents themselves, it is the institution itself that is keeping the agents from being better than they are. It’s silence when it should speak, even if it embarrasses it; hearing the SAC tell a secretary to destroy an important memorandum; and Congress’s inability to do anything about it makes me and many of the people who come here quite uneasy.
The FBI is far from perfect, but as an institution compares favorably with others–such as DOJ. Pretty dedicated folks, most of them, who try to get it right. And, really, the Bureau takes criticism better than most other govt. agencies. Hell, I took them to federal court myself (they settled), and published critical op-eds–one right from FBIHQ–but retired in ’05 in good standing with a pension. (I now do criminal defense work as an atty).
Working with informants is a very tricky business, a necessary evil–but only a fool would ever condone, much less take part in even petty crimes by the snitch–these are, after all persons who ARE giving up friends and even family members! Generally, informants are told if they get wrapped up in something unauthorized in advance, they are on-their-own.
Top Echelon informants are the most treacherous–and valuable. They get high-level DOJ/FBI clearances to commit non-violent gambling, loansharking, etc. in exchange for providing info on the higher level organized crime types.
But, believe me, I don’t believe the FBI or any govt. agencies should be beyond criticism.
Chris K
I honestly think if the FBI relied less on informants and more on the hard tedious work involved in going after the gangsters we’d be better off. I’ve always thought informants are the tool of a lazy cop.
The FBI has the idea that you can’t do Title III’s without informants. I was in the business of doing them and I have done a good number of wiretaps without them including offenses involving murder, armed robbery, gaming, and drugs. In fact, it is sometimes easier to show you have exhausted normal investigative procedures when you don’t have one. Plus as you mention informants are treacherous. All the FBI witnesses testified about the quasi military structure in the FBI and how that held them down. Because I agree with you that you have a lot of dedicated folks working there, I’d like to see them freed up more to do what they are fully capable of doing – tear up most of those rule books that you have to figure out how to run around to do the job.
You obviously have a very in-depth understanding of all of this. There are and were many problems with the way the Bureau viewed its “Informant Program.” There is not enough space to go into all of them. (But one is requiring EVERY agent to have them–some SAs just not cut out for it).
Still, I think if used carefully as ONE tool, I think they are indispensable in many circumstances. An agent & prosecutor has to sort through the informant’s motives and vet their credibility; every single (important) thing they give has to be corroborated. And they cannot be protected from serious prosecutions.
I don’t think use of informants is in any way a “lazy” technique–NOT IF done the way it needs to be. In most cases, it is almost impossible to get a federal wire without some informant info. And the wire is what you want or the informant/CW wearing a wire.
Much goes wrong when prosecutions are undertaken with such questionable witnesses without (real) hard corroboration. I wrote a book about one such case with a retired FBI AD (ricobook.com). And the Bureau did a real Pontius Pilate act on that–shameful.
There are a lot of “shades of gray” and culpability in this whole Bulger mess among ALL the agencies involved.
Will write more later. Very interesting to engage with someone who knows the ins and outs of this stuff.
Regards,
Chris K
Good Afternoon Matt,
I think that the above post is an excellent example of a topic that may be covered (or uncovered) in the days, months (hopefully years) ahead, following the conclusion of Whitey’s trial. After all, take away the colorful (or colorless) characters, corruption within our government has been the meat and potatoes of our conversation in regards to the entire twisted plot that is the Whitey Bulger tale.
John:
You are right – it’s what is behind all of this that we also have to consider.
Remember the current occupant of the White House promised the most transparent administration in history. Instead we get a secret police accountable to no one. This can only be remedied by the Democrats in Congress otherwise it will be classified as a partisan political move. 2. C and B should be mindful of the Gettysburg address. Everett’s three hour speech had no impact. The succinct, concise briefer statement did. Question all that Flemmi testified to. Including the 200 G he claimed to give Connolly. Ask if Connolly was honest. This will cause Wyshak to take the bait and spend 29 minutes of his rebuttal on Connolly not the defendant. Carney can use that article to show the total collapse of ethics in the DOJ.
N:
1. Transparency has gone down the hopper with Obama who just continues the trend of hiding more and more and the FBI is picking up those signals and going to extremes with it. No one will remedy it because the FBI pretty much runs the country.
2. Can you imagine the jurors sitting through six hours and 30 minutes of Wyshak’s whining, Carney’s blarney, and Brennan’s bluster? I’ll bet they’ll put the jurors to sleep. This shows the judge is young – any experienced judge might have given them an hour and a half at most.
If the US DOJ OIG is supposed to be the watch dog, then they need to ramp up their staff.
My son has just reported that he received an unsigned letter from the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. It was dated July 26, 2013. It was addressed to the name of Jean Vorisek Quinn, which was my stolen identity name that I needed to legally change to Jean Allan Sovik, my maiden name. The letter states “Thank you for writing the Criminal Division” Since my name was legally changed on March 10, 2003, the letter is way over due.
It then states, “Any future correspondence with this office regarding this same matter ( which is not referenced anywhere in the 7/26 letter) would be unnecessary. We urge you to review the previous responses sent by our office. I never received a response, since the matter was referred to the Criminal Division in August, 2009. In fact, I just wrote a recent letter to the OIG stating that fact.
The letter is closed with the sentence, “Again, thank you for writing the Criminal Division. We regret we cannot be of any further assistance. No signature, only Correspondence Management Staff.
And, now I have just read the article by Margaret McLean in the Patriot Ledger and on this blog with respect to the testimony of the long serving FBI Secretary. I was told by an Agent from the Boston FBI office that all my correspondence with him and others had been destroyed sometime in 1997. It would appear that if he did not destroy the evidence he would be fired. This is essentially what the FBI agents told me, also in 1997, when they said they could not pursue my request for an expanded investigation. They were concerned about losing their pensions.
I do hope that all these concerns begin to show a picture that Justice is not being served. It would be a shame for the jury to decide that Mr. Bulger is correct. Its all a sham.
Jean:
If it took you ten years to get a response to your letter you were probably lucky with the way our government seems to operate. It’s taken a Congressman over two years to get an answer from the FBI. I guess what you knew has been corroborated by the FBI secretary.
Matt, you know what the real tragedy here is? The main hands on suspect in my complaints all these years has just been found to have brutally stabbed his wife to death. Perhaps if someone would have taken me seriously when I complained that he was a stone cold killer, his wife would be alive today. But, we have just been subjected to all of the prosecutors stone cold serial killer witness, so what’s one more protected killer? OPR should not be sitting with the prosecutor. They need to rethink to whom they have a duty.
I thought you knew the head of the FBI OPR John Conditt was sentenced to 12 years in prison for having sex with 6 year old children? see
FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-17-ex-fbi-ia-chief_x.htm
Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM
The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.
John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.
MS:
No one or no agency is perfect.
Jean:
I think the the DOJ’s OIG is working hand in hand with the prosecutors then the OIG is not performing her function properly. How can you investigate whether something is being done properly if you are part of it? Good point.