Nabbed Gangster 'Whitey' Bulger Could Spill FBI Corruption Secrets
Huffington Post John
Rudolf john.rudolf@huffingtonpost.com Become a fan of this reporter
NEW YORK — James "Whitey" Bulger, arrested Tuesday after 16 years on
the lam, ruled over Boston
for decades as a mythically untouchable crime boss.
As leader of the feared Winter Hill Gang, Bulger reaped untold millions through theft, extortion,
racketeering, drug trafficking and murder, federal indictments charge. And when
federal prosecutors closed in on him in 1994, he skipped town just days before
a warrant was issued for his arrest.
He owed it all to help from the F.B.I.
It is an oft-told tale: in the mid-1970s, the F.B.I.'s organized crime office in Boston recruited Bulger,
already a fixture in the city's Irish mob, to serve as a high-level
confidential informant. For the next 20 years, he secretly fed the bureau
information about his counterparts in the Italian Mafia, tips that contributed
directly to the dismantling of some of the country's most powerful crime
families.
In return, the F.B.I. shielded Bulger
and his associates from prosecution, using methods that regularly veered into
the brazenly illegal.
Wiretaps and listening devices from other law enforcement
agencies were exposed. Government informants were identified — then allegedly
rubbed out by Bulger and his cohorts. Innocent men
were allowed to be framed for murders committed by Bulger's
gang and died in prison.
Many elements of Bulger's
unholy alliance with the F.B.I. have been chronicled through the testimony of
his fellow gangsters and through civil lawsuits brought against the
federal government by family members of his victims.
His F.B.I. handler, John J. Connolly Jr. — who
allegedly tipped Bulger in 1994 of the pending
federal indictment, prompting his 16-year flight from the law — sits in prison
with a 40-year sentence, convicted of racketeering and murder. Connolly's
supervisor, John Morris, pled guilty to accepting bribes from Bulger in exchange for inside information and in 1995, he
resigned from the bureau in disgrace.
Yet other secrets have gone unrevealed, and some believe Bulger, 81, charged with a litany of crimes, including 19
murders, has the power to expose a wide range of undisclosed official
corruption from one of the darkest eras in federal law enforcement.
"Somebody warned him about bugs. Somebody warned him
about wiretaps. Somebody warned him about informants and he murdered
them," said Austin McGuigan, a Connecticut prosecutor who investigated Bulger in the 1970s and 1980s. "Who was it? I don't
know."
"Bulger can confirm things
that haven't been confirmed yet," he said.
A prolonged trial may also open the F.B.I. to new
scrutiny over how much the bureau's leadership at the time knew about Bulger's relationship with Connolly and other corrupt
agents.
Connolly, who is appealing his 2005 murder conviction,
calls himself a "fall guy," claiming that his protection of Bulger was sanctioned at the highest level of the bureau.
"It's the worst cover-up in the modern annals of the
Justice Department," he told the Los Angeles Times
in May.
Robert Stutman, who
investigated Bulger as head of the Drug Enforcement
Agency's Boston office in the late 1970s and 1980s, said Connolly's claims of
innocence were absurd.
"I think John Connolly is where he deserves to
be," he said. "He's a scumbag."
Yet he agreed there may be merit to Connolly's claim that
higher-ups at the bureau knew of and sanctioned Bulger's
activities.
"He may be the fall guy for somebody in
headquarters," he said. "It's hard for me to believe that all this
happened without people above knowing something."
William Christie, a New Hampshire attorney, brought suit
against the F.B.I. on behalf of the family of a victim of Bulger's
gang, winning a multi-million judgment against the bureau that was later
overturned on technical grounds.
He said evidence uncovered during the civil trial clearly
demonstrated that F.B.I. leadership was aware that Bulger
was being protected from prosecution and receiving tips about pending
investigations against him.
Christie cited a memo written within F.B.I. headquarters
in the early 1980s detailing allegations by agents from the Miami
and Tulsa field offices that agents in the Boston office were
deliberately sabotaging murder investigations related to Bulger.
"There was clear knowledge that Connolly's
supervisors and F.B.I. headquarters were aware of allegations that Connolly was
leaking confidential information to Bulger," he
said. "I don't think that's debatable."
Damon Katz, chief division counsel for FBI's Boston
division, declined to comment on the allegations. "That's not something
we're going to discuss," he said.
As for Bulger -- facing
extradition to Boston
on Friday -- what information he chooses to share, if any, remains to be seen.
But many people will be listening carefully.
"This sort of opens up the box again," said
James E. McDonald, a Miami
attorney representing John Connolly in his appeal. "If he talks, it could
be very interesting. He could say a lot."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/whitey-bulger-arrested_n_884043.html
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Corruption In China: How Public
Officials Took $120 Billion And ...
Fled Overseas By The Huffington Post News Editors Economic Observer/Worldcrunch:
BEIJING - Just how many
corrupt Chinese government officials have fled overseas? How much money have
they stashed away? And how did they manage to transfer such colossal sums
abroad? Last week the Bank of China
published a report entitled "How corrupt officials transfer assets
overseas, and a study of monitoring." The report quoted statistics based
on research by the Chinese
Academy of Social
Sciences. Since 1990, the number of Communist Party and government officials,
public security members, judicial cadres, agents of State institutions, and
senior management figures of state-owned enterprises fleeing China has
reached nearly 18,000. Also missing is about 800 billion yuan
(more than $120 billion).
Read the whole story: Economic
Observer/Worldcrunch
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