I noticed yesterday that it was reported in the news media that Whitey was going to claim Jeremiah O’Sullivan gave him immunity. Readers of this blog knew months ago that he was going to make that claim. J.W. Carney has also raised the issue of Judge Stearns sitting on the case. He asked him to recuse himself saying that he was an associate of O’Sullivan during the time in question. Judge Stearns has already denied a prior request that he recuse himself. I’ve suggested before that his denial under the circumstances may not have been the wisest move especially since Carney suggests he will call him as a witness.
We discussed O’Sullivan’s testimony before the Congressional committee that the prosecutor is relying on to suggest O’Sullivan did not give Whitey immunity. A quick examination has shown how inconsistent his testimony appears to be. The prosecutor also said the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has said Whitey did not get immunity but in truth the issue was never raised before by Whitey. Its prior decision was made without all the facts, so it will not be a bar to rising the issue again.
Yesterday, I told how the Congressman on the committee seemed confused by Jeremiah O’Sullivan’s answers. The bottom line was that despite his bobbing and weaving when the Congressmen attempted to pin him down, he had a strong case against Whitey and Stevie, two men he knew were murderers and in the leadership position of the Winter Hill gang, yet he decided to give them a pass.
He was finally asked, given that he was head of the Organized Crime Strike Force, did he do anything to go after these two men. Or did he not care, as seemed to be the case, that these two murderers were running wild. O’Sullivan said that he did go after them. He pointed to two instances in his long career. The first the Lancaster Street investigation and the other when he put a wire on a cop while investigating a bookie.
Lancaster Street was not a federal investigation. I’ve devoted a whole chapter in my book Don’t Embarrass The Family to it. It was a state police investigation that had been ongoing for over six months before O’Sullivan heard about it. Doing hard grunt work and sophisticated planning and execution, the state police were able to establish evidence that Whitey, Stevie, their associates, and the leadership of the Boston Mafia including Larry Baione and the Angiulo brothers were meeting at a garage on Lancaster Street near the location of the old Boston Gardens. The state police operation had been handled in a secure and safe manner and was known to only a handful of troopers under the command of Sergeant Bobby Long.
Having gone as far as they could using normal investigative procedures, the state police sought to do electronic surveillance, that is to plant electronic bugs, in the garage to listen to the conversations of the gangsters. Bobby Long went to Colonel John O’Donovan and they decided to seek the help of O’Sullivan in doing this. Their one stipulation was that the FBI not be involved because they didn’t trust the FBI believing that if the FBI knew of their investigation it would be compromised.
What O’Donovan and Long did not know which would have caused them to act otherwise and what O’Sullivan did not disclose to them was that he was in the process of working with the FBI targeting the Boston Mafia, some of the same people the state police were targeting. O’Sullivan knew that if the state police were to be successful in their operation then they would undermine his and the FBI operation. O’Donovan and Long also did not know that O’Sullivan lived in great fear of the FBI and would do nothing to interfere with what it was doing.
You probably can figure out what happened. The state police got an order from a state judge to put the bug into the garage and soon they heard Whitey, Stevie and gang discussing what a good job the state police did patrolling the Mass Turnpike. They knew their operation had been compromised. At about the same time, FBI Agent John Morris who was working with O’Sullivan had a couple too many glasses of wine at an after work affair and he blurted out to a Boston police sergeant that he knew the state police had a bug in the garage.
Having lost months of work going after Whitey and Stevie, and by the way you’ll notice it was the state police going after them and not the FBI so that should pretty much make liars of people who said the state police were afraid to go after Whitey, O’Donovan and Long were highly upset. They called the FBI on it and Morris lied about how he knew about the bug. It seems pretty clear to me as I spell out in my book that O’Sullivan was the leak, as Flemmi testified during the hearings before Judge Wolf.
The bottom line is that when O’Sullivan offered to prove that he did some investigations of Whitey and Stevie by pointing to the Lancaster Street matter, the actual happenings show that he undermined the state police. That just leaves as the one thing he did was wiring a Boston cop to get evidence against Whitey.
All I know of that is that when the cop showed up at Whitey’s South Boston Liquor store to talk to Stevie, according to Weeks, Whitey reminded Stevie to “watch out he’s wired.” Here again, the other defense to his inaction by O’Sullivan was also quickly known about by Whitey.
Look at it this way, O’Sullivan when he had evidence against Whitey and Stevie did not indict them. Of the two attempts he pointed to in order to suggest he investigated them, one did not originate with him, and both were quickly known about by Whitey. Rather than doubling down and going after them full blast if he was bothered by this, he did nothing more against them in his long career. His inaction (assuming he didn’t actively compromise investigations against them) inures to Whitey’s benefit since it seems to support his argument that O’Sullivan gave him immunity. How else explain his indifference to these two murderers other than he gave them carte blanche immunity for their activities?
someone posted yesterday in a lot of detail about nee . open loansharking on street corners and the consorting of with other gangsters leads me to the question? where is longtime mayor tom menino in all of this? it is very hard to understand how lifelong criminals seem to find a haven with the fbi if they rise to the top in boston. i do not remember reading much about top informers as the fbi went after the gambino family full force in the 1980s. what makes boston different? how will the federal goverment prove jerimiah sullivan never gave whitey a verbal immunity deal? i bring up tom menino because i feel he has done a good job for the city of boston as mayor. however just like kevin white in the 1970s i find it disgusting that nowadays known criminals operate in boston and the city and its residents suffer for it as the federal goverment never releases the proper information about it
I think Menino has done a good job as mayor. He has not been corrupt as far as I know and that in itself is a credit to a person in a powerful position like he is in. That’s why he keeps getting elected. The people want an honest guy who tries his best and is on the level. It is a shame that seems so hard to find people like that but Menino appears to fit the bill. He’s just not involved in going after the organized crime types. He leaves that to his police commissioner who seems to have his hand full in other areas. The people who should be after Nee are the FBI and the state police. The problem that they have seems to be is that Nee is being protected by the US attorney’s office and the state police. It seem that Nee who claimed he was Whitey’s partner is believed to have had involvement in some of the murders that Whitey committed, namely, McIntyre, Halloran, and Donohue. It’s said by some he has killed several other people including Billy O’Sullivan and one of the Killeens. He is not being prosecuted for these murders, and apparently like the gangster he is, he appears to be still involved in running the rackets in Southie. I surmise that if he is, he’s an FBI top echelon informant; others have suggested he’s not with the FBI but with the state police or the DEA. You see the problem. We, as American citizens, have people living among us who are committing crimes and being protected by law enforcement agencies. To me, that strikes at the very heart of what we are about as a people.
I think the FBI did use top echelon informants against the Gambino family but I’d have to check that. A top echelon informant by definition has to be a person who is committing criminal acts with the top mobsters. The idea behind the program is really bad. What happened was the FBI used to do illegal bugging operations and when they were told it could no longer do that, to make up for the lack of information, it turned to using these criminal informants. You’ve probably read that I’ve said an informant is a lazy cop’s tool; the FBI became lazy and no longer to do the hard work associated with investigating organized crime.
The prosecutors hope to prove O’Sullivan never gave immunity because he said he didn’t. One of the problems they will face is that they are giving a guy like Nee who is suspect in five or more murders immunity to this date along with several other people. If the present prosecutors can do it without anything in writing, it would seem O’Sullivan could easily have done it.