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John “Zip” Connolly is apparently one of those hoodlums who cares what his obituary says about him after he’s dead and gone. At age 82, the infamous ex-FBI agent seems obsessed with clearing at least one indelible stain off his remarkably squalid (even by Boston G-man standards) underworld career. He’d prefer not to have “Mob hitman” in the first sentence of his death notice. There’s not much he can do about the racketeering conviction, or all his tawdry connections to the Bulger Crime Family. But “Mob hitman” is a bit much. Sadly, Zip has failed yet again to remove “assassin”...

There’s no way in hell they shouldn’t tell all’.. The FBI is closing the book on the agency’s “corrupt” handling of James “Whitey” Bulger — forever. The feds are refusing to make any further installments of Bulger’s case file public, saying the records are “investigative” and no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act. “The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. Therefore, your request is being administratively closed,”...

Here's the question about Stevie Flemmi: Is he going out as Joe Valachi, or as Joe Barboza? That is, is he an embittered old man lifting the lid on organized crime, or is he an imprisoned hit man using the government to settle all his old scores? Probably some of both. I know that all of the ex-FBI agents have denied they took cash from the serial killers, Stevie Flemmi and his partner, Whitey Bulger. But at least one or two of these feds have already been named by other witnesses, under oath. Kevin Weeks testified that Whitey used to...

Notorious gangster Stephen ''The Rifleman" Flemmi said in two recent depositions that he and his partner, James ''Whitey" Bulger, paid more than $200,000 to their FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., while working as informants, and gave cash to five other agents. Questioned under oath in lawsuits against the government over the FBI's handling of the gangsters, Flemmi said they paid $5,000 each to John Newton and John Morris and $2,500 each to Nicholas Gianturco, Michael Buckley, and John Cloherty. Transcripts of the depositions, taken in October and last month, were reviewed by the Globe. Flemmi, who began cooperating with...

Receive FREE updates by email: New Developments In The Salvati Case By Notra Trulock November 12, 2003 Earlier this year, Accuracy in Media reported on the case of Joseph Salvati, who spent nearly thirty years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. False, uncorroborated testimony by an FBI informant convicted Salvati in 1968 of murder. Salvati was finally freed in 1997 after Boston WBZ-TV reporter Dan Rea uncovered old police records that exonerated him. Salvati was framed by an informant recruited by two FBI agents working out of the Boston office, Paul Rico and Dennis Condon....

New city FBI chief no stranger to big cases He headed probe leading to fellow agent's conviction By Gail Gibson Sun Staff Originally published October 14, 2002 In more than two decades with the FBI, Special Agent Gary M. Bald always was drawn to solving complex, highly organized crimes, from mob-linked political corruption in Philadelphia to the profit-hiding schemes of Colombian drug gangs. But the highest-profile assignment for the man who this month took over as head of the FBI's Baltimore office - and quickly found himself immersed in the search for a deadly serial sniper - was to unravel...