-Caveat Lector- >From TheBostonHerald http://www.bostonherald.com/bostonherald/colm/cohen10051999.htm {{<Begin>}} Boston papers danced to FBI's tune by Rachelle Cohen Tuesday, October 5, 1999 It's our dirty little secret. Except that it's not so secret any more, not if you wade knee-deep into the garbage heap of FBI corruption described by U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf in his recent voluminous decision involving the region's most notorious crime bosses. Rather like the Starr Report, the best material in the 661-page Wolf decision can be found in its footnotes. After all, that's where Wolf indicates he's turning over evidence to Attorney General Janet Reno on yet another unnamed FBI agent (he notes by name the four agents he's not talking about) for ``whatever action, if any, she deems appropriate.'' Wolf charges the agent-handler in question warned his informant of investigations concerning him and of wiretaps on his phone. The judge leaves the impression this is a rather recent incident. Ah, but the best material, for those of us in the often holier-than-thou world of journalism, is also the most disturbing. It seems the FBI played the media - some of the best reporters in the business - like the proverbial violin. It wasn't a pretty picture, but it's one that demands a closer look. It's June of 1989. Raymond J. Patriarca had already succeeded his dead father as head of The Family, but factions had begun to develop, one led by Joseph Russo, the other by Frank Salemme. And in The Family such disputes were often deadly. In the middle of all this was then-FBI agent John Connolly, best known as the ``handler'' for James ``Whitey'' Bulger and Stephen Flemmi until his retirement in 1990. Connolly, it seems, was not above causing mischief among the mobsters - at least those who had not signed up for the John Connolly career advancement program. So Connolly takes some of the information provided by Flemmi and bestows it ``improperly,'' Wolf notes, on Shelley Murphy, then a reporter for the Boston Herald. (Murphy has since gone to work for The Boston Globe and last month reported on the Wolf decision.) ``The Boston Herald published an article by Murphy headlined, `Ex-con seen as Hub Mob's heir apparent' which consisted mainly of information that closely tracks the reports Connolly prepared,'' Wolf wrote. The article indicated that Salemme had Patriarca's ``blessing'' to seize power in Boston. Three days later - June 16, 1989 - Salemme was shot down and Patriarca Family underboss William Grasso was murdered. ``It appears that the leak to the Boston Herald may have had the foreseeable effect, if not purpose, of provoking the attempt to murder Salemme,'' Wolf writes. ``If Salemme had been murdered by the Russo faction of the Patriarca Family, the FBI would have been spared the necessity of developing a prosecutable case against him. ``In addition, Flemmi and Bulger would have received one of the benefits of their bargain with the Bureau - an enhanced opportunity to profit from the vacuum created by the decimation of the LCN [La Costa Nostra] in Boston.'' Hey, the information was good. What's better than an FBI source? Still, it makes you want to take a long shower. Neither was rogue agent John Morris above using the media in what he hoped was a move that might get him off the hook. Already on the take for $6,000 from Bulger and Flemmi and afraid that if prosecuted they might rat him out, ``Morris decided to try to eliminate Bulger and Flemmi as a threat to him,'' Wolf wrote. ``To accomplish this Morris told Gerard O'Neill, a reporter for The Boston Globe, that Bulger was an FBI informant. Morris expected that the newspaper would publish this fact, while protecting Morris as its source. Morris also calculated that such a story would prompt the LCN to murder Bulger and probably prove fatal to Flemmi as well.'' Well, the story eventually ran on Sept. 20, 1988, but not before yet another agent, Thomas Daly, attempted to kill the thing by intimidating the bejeesus out of a second reporter on the story, Kevin Cullen, who had the misfortune of making his home in Bulger's own South Boston. ``The Boston Globe article contributed to Bulger and Flemmi's decision to withdraw from some of their most obvious criminal activity in an effort to insulate themselves from effective investigation and prosecution,'' Wolf wrote. ``In this sense the timing of The Boston Globe article was fortuitous.'' So the Globe article, designed by Morris to fry his two favorite thugs, saved their butts. Dontcha just hate when that happens! In his decision Wolf quotes a 1924 warning by Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone (later chief justice) when he established the FBI: ``There is always the possibility that a secret police may become a menace to free government and free institutions because it carries with it the possibility of abuses of power which are not always quickly apprehended or understood.'' Now we can count a free press among the institutions abused and menaced by the FBI's own corruption. {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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