(This is being published each Sunday in serial form. For full view of past postings go here. )
The big thing at this point that stands out is the huge rush and the failure of an experienced prosecutor to do what should have been done in this case. As an experienced prosecutor one knows that it is a bedrock principle that if you are going to take a shot at a king you better make sure it kills him
Translated it means you don’t go after a person who is not a known criminal, especially one who is in a position of prominence as a person in a high position in society or a state trooper with 23 years experience, unless you have enough evidence to crush him. Here the next logical step if they really believed Naimovich was corrupt was to go up on his telephones to intercept his conversations and to continue with the in-house surveillance that had so far shown nothing.
Rather than doing a thorough investigation to nail down the case, in this instance with the wiretap ongoing on McIntryre’s home they conduct a raid on January 29, 1988. Nothing up to that time on the wiretap had gives them the critical evidence that they needed. The raid is followed by an unusual pre-arranged Saturday morning meeting with the head of the Organized Crime Strike force, O’Sullivan. He’s before a grand jury on February 2 and gets an indictment. It took O’Sullivan three years after the bug on Angiulo’s office to get an indictment. Normally it takes weeks if not months. But here with the wiretap ongoing, or at least it was three days before, O’Sullivan is in the grand jury getting an indictment.
But there is more to this which I know about. During my wiretaps as I moved up the organize crime ladder I had contact with O’Sullivan by telephone. I called him once, maybe more, because I wanted to learn the names of the guys who were believed to be running the Boston Mafia since the Angiulos and Larry Baione had been incarcerated. I needed them so I could plant the names on the bookies I was bringing into the grand jury sessions hoping to get them talking about these guys. If they did I hoped to hear some of the discussions over my wires and bug.
I told O’Sullivan generally what I was doing. I told him I was on the wires and of my plan to plant the names so I would get the feed back. O’Sullivan knew my taps had gone to levels that endangered Whitey. He should have known that I never would have been at that level were Naimovich in any way corrupt. Yet he was hell-bent on indicting Naimovich.
Of course I too was not trusted by O’Sullivan. He knew I was working with Naimvoich but never let me know he was operating against him. I never knew a thing about him doing this until the day Naimovich was arrested and I picked up the telephone to call him to tell him the federals had made a big mistake in doing that.
I had been informed of Naimovich’s arrest when Rick Zebrasky, a state police lieutenant who was in charge of my drug task force and who knew I was working on the wiretap with Naimovich, called me early in that February 3rd on my private land line. First words out of his mouth, “guess who just got arrested.” After he told me I reached out to others on the state side to see what I could learn about it. No one either knew or wanted to say too much. You have to understand that in 1988 everyone lived in mortal fear of the FBI. I called one captain who couldn’t wait to hang up on me. The best I was able to find out was it had something to do with him giving things to organized crime people.
I immediately thought it was related to the grand jury hearings where I had told Naimovich as part of our plan to try to flip some of the guys it would be all right to return some of the things we seized from them. We had Jimmy Katz’s glasses and shoes since he ran out of the back door of the bookie office that the state police hit before they could get through the front door leaving them behind. I also told him he could give them copies of cuff sheets.
After learning what I could, I called O’Sullivan to tell him if that’s what they thought he had done that was criminal it wasn’t since I authorized it. O’Sullivan listened to me and said it was no mistake. It was not that. He said Naimovich has been leaking things to the Mafia for years and he has been suspected of doing it for a long time. I got the impression from my call that they had a ton of evidence against him which went back a long time. He was obviously lying to me. But why? Why didn’t he trust me to ask me what I thought about Naimovich, or to tell me I was working with a guy they thought was a leak, or then dissemble when I called him.
Why was everything that he was doing far removed from normal. It was so far removed that when he presented the case to the grand jury that Tuesday, February 3, 1988, he never told the jurors that Naimovich and McIntyre had a trooper/informant relationship. He knew about it on January 29, 1988 for sure. He could have learned about it in October 1987 had he taken the basic investigatory steps one would take. He would not tell the jurors even after one of them asked the question whether there was some type of activity going on the jurors weren’t being told about.
Nothing fits! Yet it gets worse.
Matt et al.,
It’s funny. I’m just so sad.
I was watching Tom Foley giving great, measured interviews.
I think he said much of what you (all you smart legal beagles) have said.
He didn’t look happy or victorious.
How many people were hurt or killed or were left simply terrified because of a sick collusion between extortioners, law enforcement and the DOJ. The murders? Let’s count how many could have been prevented. How many died prematurely from the terror?
In the Statehouse, there’s a mural of a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Samuel Sewall who served for 36 years. He’d come to the conclusion that what he did was wrong. He publicly repented of the “blame and shame” of his actions. He’d presided at the Witch Trials.
He went on to do very good things for deserving people.
Boston,
We have a chance to search our own souls and clean them up.
And we have a chance to do good. Fundamental good.
Love,
Firefly
Firefly:
Judge Sewell was the father of 14 children. He happily executed all those witches when he could and then later when he thought it over decided it wasn’t such a good idea. I guess unlike Whitey he repented and that’s what makes Whitey so dastardly is what seems to be his idea of himself. I found it remarkable that John Martorano thinks of himself as a good man and Steve Flemmi blames everyone else for his criminal activities. What do you do with people like that who will forever justify their actions and feel no remorse. That’s bad enough but what do you do when you have government agencies that take on that attitude that even the bad that it does is good. We have laws to protect us from those brutes who live among us but when they ally with those who are supposed to control them we end up with situations like you noted, many hurt, killed and terrified.
Matt: Just some more backstory to use as filler material.
A couple of posts back I mentioned that we had brought LAPD narcotics
detective Mike Ruppert to speak at Bates College in the spring of 2001 . We had a heavy lineup of speakers on the dais that year besides Mike Ruppert. They included Darruba Bin Wahid, a Black Panther who had spent over 20 years in prison before a judge released him saying FBI agents had framed him. Attorney John DeCamp was a speaker. The former Nebraska State Senator who ran as a Republican and was elected to office while a soldier in Vietnam during the 1970’s, DeCamp was also a close friend of CIA Director William Colby. Attorney DeCamp’s book FRANKLIN COVERUP details a national pedophile ring that was involved in kidnapping, torturing and sexually abusing little children. In some cases murdering them. The ring went all the way to the Bush White House. FBI agents were involved in protecting the ring. There were other speakers but I mention Mike Ruppert because of his work exposing local law enforcement working with the CIA to bring heroin and cocaine into our communities. Another person who has spoken out on this subject is Mike Levine, author and former DEA Supervisor. See what he has to say about the New York City Whitey Bulger story at his website today. http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/site/
MS:
Thanks for the information. I’m not so sure I want to go as far as some of the people you talk about. I’ll read up on them to learn more after I have a chance to catch up on other sorely neglected items.
Matt:
I keep forgetting to ask you. Did Ivan have an official request for
transfer? That would mean by Department Policy an official type
written request for transfer from “SSS” to Norfolk DA’s office thru
channels. This would open eyes from Mattioli to the Colonel’s office
that Ivan is attempting to go to the Norfolk DA’s office with your
and the DA’s backing. I know Ivan whispered in my ear a couple of
times that you were trying to get him transferred to your office.
Bob H
Bob:
I’m not sure of whether Ivan put anything in officially. This was something we were talking about after Mattioli came in because he could not stand working with him and I always enjoyed working with you guys so it seemed something we could have brought about. We already had the location in Braintree where Zebra was conducting his operations from.
I must have mentioned it to Delahunt. I don’t know whether he talked to anyone about it. I’m sure Delahunt was behind it 100% since he gave me carte blanch in that area and any backing I needed.
All I remember is I could do it on my end, because of the holidays we shut down and after them I was doing the legal stuff to see what we could do next so I didn’t see him as much afte we had the idea. I remember thinking when I was working on the stuff it would be good having Ivan in the office to help me because when he was with the SSU he was also doing other stuff and I would have needed him to prepare the cases for the grand jury and also to see where else we could go with the wires.
Interesting stuff.
Also unfortunate how the “job” will run for the hills once it’s been decided someone is to be “POOFED”.
Best friends, the same ones you risked your life for, will run and cower in fear to protect their jobs/pensions and let even knowingly innocent cops go off to hell without having the courage to stand up and tell the truth out of the fear they’re next.
Somethings wrong with the system and more so with those type of people that will target an innocent cop for their own political purposes.,
Notoboyo:
Well said. What particularly bothered me was hearing some good FBI agents telling how they could do nothing against the bad ones without putting their job and pension at risk. It’s hard for guys with families to have that type of courage.