FBI-used-secret-spy-program-protect-killers-jail-innocents-screw-victims. This article is noteworthy because it provides links and the findings of the judge in the lawsuit against the FBI brought forward by the men wrongfully convicted of murder in Boston in the late sixties, early seventies (Limone et al). The FBI protected Whitey Bolger and Steven Flemmi. During the time Flemmi and Bulger were FBI informants they are suspected of 20 murders.

The definition of Chutzpah has got to be somewhere in the FBI’s current stance. The rules and regulations that they now brag about were the results of their misconduct in the Boston Field Office, in the Limone, et al prosecution. One former agent, now doing life for murder, murder conspiracy, and engaging in Organized Crime, “Zip” Connolly is a poster child for the Retired Agents Association as a victim of wrongful conviction. At the same time, the Bureau and the Department of Justice, in no less a personage than Robert Mueller, maintain that Salvati, Limone, Tameleo, and Greco were properly convicted. They or their survivors would hit the Massachusetts Organized Crime Lottery when the trial court ordered them released with a multi-million dollar settlement. Two of the four died in prison.

I have interviewed, documented, managed, and worked with confidential informants. They are nobody’s friends. They are a necessary tool and a good informant is a precious commodity, but the value starts depreciating when the tool is not used for its originally intended purpose.

For those of you who don’t have the patience to read a true crime rendering of the Boston FBI and Whitey Bulger, I recommend:

This was George V. Higgins last book. He died at the age of 59. Along the way, he was an Assistant Attorney General and an Assistant United States Attorney in Massachusetts. He specialized in novels dealing with the New England underworld and Massachusetts politics, not always one and the same. This story is Higgins’ take on the Steven Flemmi and Whitey Bulger story with the FBI. It doesn’t matter whether you latch on to Howie Carr (for the nonfiction journey) or George V Higgins (for the novel) the reader ends up in the same neighborhood.