Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal by Dick Lehr & Gerard O'Neill

Author:Dick Lehr & Gerard O'Neill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781610391689
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2012-05-21T21:00:00+00:00

The trio of Connolly, Bulger, and Flemmi was just as happy to see Morris as Morris was to see them. Especially Connolly—Jim Ring had been a tough mark. Connolly had tried his best to get off on the right foot by arranging get-togethers so everyone could get to know one another. (“John Connolly came to me and used the expression, ‘The boys want to meet with you,’” Ring said later.) But Ring had studied Connolly, grown increasingly concerned at the agent’s breezy style, and was left momentarily speechless at the end of the dinner at Mrs. Flemmi’s house when, “as we were leaving, Whitey Bulger’s brother, Bill Bulger, came into the kitchen to give him some photographs.

“What the hell is going on?” Ring blurted at Connolly afterward about the pileup of breaches in protocol—the casual dinner atmosphere with two crime bosses, the involvement of an informant’s mother, the entrance of one of the state’s most powerful public figures. No one in the room had even blinked—one big happy family. Connolly didn’t understand Ring’s question. He simply pointed out to his supervisor that Bill Bulger lived next door—that was the explanation for the unexpected drop-in.

Ring’s dismay had culminated in private sit-downs with the Boston office’s star handler of informants. The supervisor’s list of grievances covered just about every basic ground rule the FBI or any police agency had on how to work informants. “I had a meeting with John Connolly in my office,” Ring said later, “and I told him that what I was observing was contacts with Mr. Flemmi and Mr. Bulger with mistakes made that a first-year agent wouldn’t make.” Ring complained that Connolly’s friendly manner was way over the top, that instead of treating the two informants as criminals he treated them as if they were colleagues at the FBI office.

Ring immediately noticed that information was flowing the wrong way—to Bulger and Flemmi. Connolly, Ring said, “gave away too much. He could have rephrased the question in a different way. You could have buried the question among five others, and the one thing—I think it was the second meeting—that struck me was Connolly turned to me and said something to the effect, ‘Oh, tell them about such and such.’”

The meetings at Connolly’s home in South Boston were also a problem. “It was crazy,” Ring said. He ordered Connolly to stop hosting Bulger and Flemmi at his home. Connolly responded like a merry schoolboy prankster determined to fool the stern, humorless schoolmaster. He sought out another agent, John Newton, and asked if he could move the gatherings to his South Boston apartment. Newton, the agent Connolly had befriended upon his arrival in Boston, was happy to help. Newton opened up his home to his FBI friend, and when they all showed up for these unauthorized encounters, Newton would take his two dogs out for a stroll. The considerate Bulger eventually began bringing along dog biscuits.

Connolly then reported back to Ring that he’d obeyed the order and halted the practice of meeting at his house.

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