I’ve always known most of the reporters who cover the story of Whitey and his family have no street credentials. They’ve grown up in another world than that of Whitey or his associates. They can’t really understand the intricacies of a neighborhood like South Boston and its culture no matter how much they try. They seem unable to recognized that unless you grow up with these things and feel them on your skin and deep in your bones you won’t catch on to what is going on.
I’ve reflected on this situation this morning in church (I know I shouldn’t have been thinking of this) as I thought about the things I wrote over the last three days. One thing I was bothered about was the attempt to make Whitey a federal informant back in 1956 when the evidence showed just the opposite. Whitey was arrested after a fellow bank robber, Carl Smith, turned state’s evidence against him. Any FBI agent will tell you that they laid out to Whitey the information they had against him and suggested that they were going to jack up his girlfriend Jacqui unless he confessed to being in it with Smith. Whitey could deny it but the FBI would have dragged Jacqui into it. He had no choice so he admitted that he was part of the robberies and told Jacqui to cooperate with the FBI to save herself.
He did this to save his girlfriend from being prosecuted. To suggest that makes him an informant shows the media has little idea how the world of gangsters and cops work. You can’t be an informant against yourself. It’s called confessing. If the cops already have the information and the method to prove it and you want to help out a buddy by admitting it, you are not informing.
This got me to thinking that everything we’ve been fed by the media in this case has to be reconsidered. One thing we’ve been constantly told is that Whitey was an FBI informant. He is listed on the FBI books as being an informant. Yet we’ve seen what is written in the FBI files is not necessarily so.
Here’s why. Stevie Flemmi admitted that since the Sixties he had been an informant for the FBI. Yet the FBI records showed he was an informant for only part of that time. He was opened, then closed, and then reopened. Stevie knew nothing of these administrative entries.
No one outside the FBI knows of what is in their files. Former head of the Strike Force Jeremiah O’Sullivan suggested that the FBI files contain things the agents make up as they go along. For all we know the FBI could list any one of us as being an informant.
We’re told by the media that FBI agent John Connolly was corrupt. He was prosecuted in Boston and Miami based on the idea that Whitey was not his informant but Connolly became an informant for Whitey and was giving FBI information to him.
The media wants you to believe that Whitey was Connolly’s informant without critically examining the supposition. On the other hand it also wants you to believe Connolly was Whitey’s informant. Is this not an impossibility? Doesn’t one have to be the informant and the other the recipient of the information?
This contradiction stares the media straight in the face but it has yet to grapple with it. It is so intent on blackening Whitey it does not see the inconsistency in its position. I tell in my book Don’t Embarrass The Family how Murderman Martorano spun a story saying Whitey cleared with him and the others in the Winter Hill gang his relationship with Connolly. Murderman testified Whitey told them Connolly was going to give him information because Billy Bulger told Connolly to keep his brother Whitey out of trouble.
Then Stevie Flemmi tells how he and Whitey never gave Connolly any information of value. To use his expression, “we gave him garbage and got back gold.” Another indication that Whitey was not an informant. The the overall position of the feds that Connolly was corrupt because he was giving information to Whitey corroborated by the testimony of Murderman and Stevie point to one conclusion, Whitey was not an informant in fact even though he was listed as one in the FBI files.
Rather than being considered an informant, Whitey is more properly classified as a double agent. That would seem to fit what we know about the guy who we consider wise, wily, and wicked. But it would not fit the media’s mantra. It wants all things Whitey to look black and suggesting that he never betrayed his friends would give him a more elevated status.
Looking closely at this it seems that is the only conclusion that the evidence of the government, gangsters and media groupies will admit. It puts a lot of what has been written about him in a different light. If Whitey was not a rat, then where does that leave Murderman and Brutalman?
This is an alleged quote of Whitey Bulger: “Relax, we’re all good guys here. You’re the good-good guys. We’re the bad-good guys.”
…if this quote is true, then what I know to be true of John Iuele is accurate. And makes my family’s story even more chilling. If one of the ‘bad-good guys’ in our story behaves as if he is one of the ‘good-good guys’ then what does that make the ‘other good-good guys’, who have continued to allow the real ‘bad guys’ to harm us?
Jean:
That quote is accurate. The DEA reported Whitey as having said that. As to whether it makes sense, I think not. Bad and good do not mix. There are no bad-good guys. Bad guys like Martorano think they are good but if that is the case then we might as well not have a language if the clear intent of the word actually means the opposite.
I agree that until the complete body of the debriefing reports of Bulger can be read and evaluated it is hard if not impossible to determine whether he gave up any info of quality or was strictly playing the FBI (Connolly). Of course he could have been doing both. Adding to the difficulty of determining Bulger’s value is that the debriefing reports are not necessarily accurate recitations as to what info Bulger provided. It is not uncommon for law enforcement officers (LEOs) to take information obtained from other sources and attribute it to their CI’s for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, it has been bandied about in the media that Connolly was terrible at paperwork which would also cut against the notion that the reports wold be full and complete.
I do think that Flemmi probably did provide good information in his first time around as a CI (for Paul Rico). What Rico did with that info is another matter. As bad as Rico was, and he was plenty bad, to me at least he was much more street smart in his dealings with his CI’s than Connolly was.
You are again right on the mark. The little I saw of the material that Whitey gave to Connolly it was steering him in the wrong way and telling him things about others in law enforcement who he did not like. I don’t know how you’d ever get to go through all the 302s filed by Connolly but I’m sure if you could you may find Whitey gave him little of value. Even in the 98 Prince Street (Angiulo) investigation which Connolly used to suggest Whitey’s value it seemed clear that Whitey provided little or any evidence since the original affidavit was written out without any input from him but Agent Morris seeking to protect him ordered Agent Quinn to rewrite it so that it looked like Whitey gave them some information. Then again, as you note, Connolly’s reports of information that he attributed to Whitey could have been gained from other sources.
I agree with you about Flemmi. Rico was cut out of a different cloth than Connolly. I can’t see any informant using him. He seemed to be in control. I can’t say that about Connolly. I don’t know enough about Rico whether he was giving the gangster information as Connolly appeared to have done but he seemed to have secured good evidence from Flemmi and his informants like the identity of the guys who blew up Attorney Fitzgerald. Everyone agreed that for the Anguilo wiretap Flemmi went into Angiulo’s headquarters and gave the FBI the physical layout. Whitey was piggy backed on him.