Carney and Brennan (C&B) will ask why are they so intent on putting Connolly away forever and getting Whitey? Why did they do things unprecedented in the annals of American criminal justice by giving the witnesses against Whitey, each one far more evil than Whitey, gifts better than the Magi bought the Savior: A confessed murderer of 20, six months in jail for each murder and $1000 for each one when he left his cushy prison; a vile man who informed on his friends all his life and murdered among many others two young women who he had abused; a life long thug who beat and maimed people, who prided himself on being Brutal, who participated in five murders doing only a year in jail, one for each plus the return of lottery money the government initially asserted he extorted from others; or a FBI supervisor incapable of not lying who was in charge but preferred to fill his pocket with lucre who retired with full pay and spent not a second in prison Each deal outrageous, combined the English language has no word to describe it.
And to what end? To “get Whitey the Informant” who turns out not to be an informant. What else could justify such madness on behalf of the government to compel it to make such deals? What is it that Whitey did or knows that makes him in the government’s eyes criminal numero uno — an occupier of the number one spot in the ten most wanted people in the world, replacing Osama bin Laden the leader of the murderous Al Qaeda
Imagine that! This gangster from South Boston who rarely left the Boston environs is elevated to such lofty heights that he replaces the leader of the terrorists we have spent trillions of dollars fighting and are still at war with. Think of that and ask how does Whitey fit into all of this?
I ask you have you ever thrown off your mental shackles and spent a moment to think of what it means if Whitey isn’t an informant? I’ve laughed at his claim of not being one believing it was delusional or an old man’s strategy to redeem something of value to an ill spent life. I never gave it a serious thought until just the last few days. I’ll explore that more later. Now I want to try to figure out what is it about Whitey that put him at the top of the criminal and terrorist mountain.
We’ve been told by Carney he had a deal with O’Sullivan. We can objectively see he had a deal because he was tied in to the Race Fixing case as solidly as those others who were convicted but given a pass. O’Sullivan refused to indict him. Does that give us a hint?
I often asked why would O’Sullivan give Whitey anything if Whitey was not an informant. I’m caught up in the thinking based on my years of prosecuting that a prosecutor would only make a deal with someone if they had some information to give back. I never imagined the other situation which apparently was behind the deal between O’Sullivan and Whitey.
Whitey had to have known something that could force a prosecutor to make a deal with him. More simply put, Whitey had something with which to blackmail the prosecutor. Gangsters believe everyone has his price. Everyone can be bought. Judges, prosecutors or elected officials. You just have to find what it is they most value and threaten to take it away,destroy it or reveal it.
What was it then that O’Sullivan most valued? What was it Whitey could have known that he could blackmail O’Sullivan with?
One thing we know he knew and that was that Flemmi had been informing on people since the 1960s. He had been undermining the Mafia and others since that time. If Whitey decided to expose Flemmi’s status, the DOJ and FBI would have known he could severely damage their attempt to destroy the Mafia in Boston and New England .
But it could have been much more than that. He might have known from Flemmi that Salemme now doing time in state prison for blowing up Attorney Fitzgeral’s car didn’t do it (as Salemme has said) and the FBI and DOJ people knew about it and let him get wrongly convicted in order to protect Flemmi. Not nice stuff.
It still make more sense that Whitey actually was an informant, at least at the start or to some degree. Even if he did have something on O’Sullivan (which there is zero proof of), it doesn’t even necessarily mean he wasn’t an informant. In order to get in the position to make the blackmail attempt, to get the meetings with O’Sullivan, one would think Whitey would almost certainly have to have been an informant- just blackmailing a US Attorney cold seems too bold even for this guy.
And if he was blackmailing O’Sullivan, then wouldn’t Bulger put the dirt out when he got indicted?
The right answer is the most obvious one, he was bad informant. ~~
ahhhh, perhaps obvious at Smith but not to people who see it. After the testimony given so far it is unreasonable for anyone to trust any assertion made by the prosecution and certain reporters and a Boston newspaper regarding all things Bulger.
Add to that the recent report that the FBI has ruled “justified” all 150 FBI shooting investigated.
Then re-familiarize yourself with the recent unexplained ye bizarre and frightening shooting death of a suspect by an FBI agent while being interrogated with at least five other law enforcement types present.
It’s a shame that more people don’t experience enough real life to know a con when it hits them in the face.
Go Mount Holyoke! ~~
Ernie”
The idea behind the founding of our country is that people would pay attention. When you are given something precious if you don’t watch it someone will take it from you. That’s what is happening now with the way the FBI operates. I can’t believe no mainstream media cares that a person was gunned down by one or more cops and we’re told they’ll tell us about it when they damn well please and aside from that can silence both the Florida and Massachusetts cops. It’s so amazing that our country can let this happen yet it seems not to register with anyone except the handful who are hered.
Up Mount Holyoke!
asmithee:
I think, as I said, Whitey knew Flemmi was an informant. That’s what he had on O’Sullivan a way to blow up his Mafia investigations. Proof is the cutting out in the race fixing indictment. Why did O’Sullivan meet with Whitey. Seems that really happened. Prosecutors don’t usually have secret meetings with crooks.
Whitey was using and paying Connolly ~ that’s how he gets access ~ Connolly thought he and Whitey were friends ~ FBI phony system let him make him an informant ~ when Whitey didn’t give him any general bull to put in file he took it from other files so no one would think Whitey wasn’t giving him stuff ~ who would ever believe Whitey after he got indicted ~ his clout was gone since the Mafia had been destroyed ~ plus to come out would be to rat out Flemmi which he didn’t want to do
One could imagine that this works because O Sullivan believes even in 1979 that Whitey was small time compared to the Mafia. In other words, give into the blackmail because it is more tolerable to let a small timer like Whitey remain on the street than to jeopardize the war against the Mafia. As I’ve been implying, the hydra of myths is in part due to anachronistic (ex post) thinking. If one places oneself in the time when it all went down, and tries to understand the incentives and priorities that prevailed in real time, one gets closer to the truth of what happened.
Jon:
A problem with all ex-post facto happenings is that people use present day knowledge to decide things that happened years ago. What was often acceptable in the 60s and 70s is no longer acceptable now. You are absolutely correct that we have to look at the mindset of the players as they take place in the mid to late Seventies.
Something personal to O’Sullivan I suggest
Ernie:
O’Sullivan’s job and reputation was very personal to him.
Matt, do you have any info on O’Sullivan’s background?
is he one of us? 🙂 ~~
Ernie:
I knew the guy and thought he was on the level. He was sort of lace curtain from what I could see but seemed like a good prosecutor. Always had a good relationship with him but didn’t do much with him. I could call him if I need to find out some OC stuff. Got dissolutioned with him when he lied to me about the Naimovich case, presented it to the grand jury leaving out important exculapatory evidence, and when he testified before Congress he was afraid of the FBI. I could see him wanting to get the Mafia so much and make it the highlight of his life that he would undermine Lancaster street and also deal with Whitey to keep the secret of Flemmi being his informant when I realized how fearful he was of the FBI and figured that was the reason he misled the grand jury because of his fear of it and attempt to please it.
One other thought just popped into my mind based on a comment Patty wrote the other day, when read in concert with the above post. To paraphrase, Patty wrote that “Whitey was known to let domestic abusers know that he would take it personally if they were beating on a woman, and that proved to be the best deterrent to that crime.” Flemmi as we know was an abuser/killer of women. Flemmi was Morris’ guy. Did Morris insert or remove or doctor information or cover anything up in the “informant file” of Flemmi to that end? How about in his own “civil, bitter divorce,” that you mentioned? How bitter was it? Any 209A’s not matching up with the 209s?
Alex-
Morris is running around with secretary for five or more years doesn not make for a pretty breakup especially when he’s trying to hide money from his wife. We didn’t do much on Flemmi’s informant file.
eeww. So Connolly dressed “cheesy” and was a little “cheesy” with the file, all the while Morris was all around “cheesy” to those whom he supposedly “loved” (including the Bureau) – the ones who made a vow to be most honest and true to…
And Cullen, Murphy, Carr et al, didn’t see a problem with or see through the pattern of “cheese-factor” on all of those guys? Uh-oh. What does that say about them?
And the FBI stands for what? – The F stands for “Fidelity” and the “I” stands for “Integrity”??? And they had Morris as the head of it? Oh, C’mon! That’s almost silly.
Okay, fine. I of course know that times have changed and that that there is absolutely no stigma to inter-office romances these days, particularly between a boss and his under-ling unlike the days where such a relationship might indicate or suggest the potential for sexual harassment in the workplace. I recognize we live in a much more sexual harassment permissive culture as a result of Mad-Men and 50 Shades of Gray…so, to that end…maybe we just all owe Morris a huge thank you and look to him as a prophet. Perhaps his “management style” at the FBI therefore is more prevalent at the FBI then we know???? – clearly the FBI had no problem with it – as such, it must be a good thing – it must have been a good thing that Morris of the FBI was so cheesy to “run around with his secretary while married” – a clear and outright “diss” of the most sacred vows of being true, sworn – oh my- on the Bible- and so willing to set the course (or morality-bar) so LOW that all future FBI employees and basically anyone out there anywhere could follow it. A lowly worm could follow it and that was the type of person hired to run the FBI. That was the type of person Cullen, and Murphy, and Carr staked their career reputations on.
Mr. John Morris – hats off – if for nothing else – you, sir, are truly precedent setting! Not for good, but For ill, not just for the victims and the reporters who relied on your but for the once noble institution of the FBI itself…
and that PR disaster of a man still gets a pension from the FBI? And the victims families’ can’t go after his assets?
BTW – look closely, Morris is blush not from embarrassment which he should be but rather from the spider veins caused by the vino. Whitey bests him – and therefore becomes more believable – on the sober v. alcoholism factor alone.
FBI – C’mon! An alcoholic, lying, cheating, file-scheming, womanizer as your director??
Ms. Ortiz – have any comments on that?
Alex:
John Connolly married a woman who also was a secretary for the FBI – so that sort of complete’s the Morris circle.
And the logic of that scenario shines through. It makes perfect sense. Of course handlers would want to keep “Whitey Happy” if he “knew” something and had something on them. Moreover, if Whitey was indeed asked by Morris himself to bump Morris’ wife off and denied him, then perhaps he had something else on the FBI that he was using to his advantage, on Morris in particular – hence Morris’ vendetta. Or was Morris just pathological fearful that Whitey could use something to that effect against him and this went on a mission to take him set up him up using the press as a tool/weapon. I think more needs to be exposed with respect to Mr. Morris and his relations with Flemmi. What is Morris’ background prior to the FBI, where did he grow up? Where did he go to school? Who were his friends? Did he work anywhere prior to the FBI? Who were his superiors, “mentors” or his “go to’s” in the FBI?
Alex:
To tell you the truth Morris was really a Mr. Nobody – the big game was played out all around him and he did not see it.