FBI Handling of Mob Informants Condemned

WASHINGTON - While probing organized crime in New England since the 1960s, the FBI used killers as informants, shielded them from prosecution and knowingly sent innocent people to jail, House investigators said Thursday in concluding a two-year inquiry.

The bureau's conduct "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement," according to the final report from the House Government Reform Committee.

"Federal law enforcement personnel tolerated and probably encouraged false testimony in a state death penalty case just to protect their criminal informants," said Rep. Dan Burton, who started the investigation when he was committee chairman.

"False testimony sent four innocent men to jail. They were made scapegoats in order to shield criminals," said Burton, R-Ind.

The FBI came under criticism for trying to stonewall investigators. Lawmakers complained that the bureau delayed giving them access to audio recordings and logs of conversations involving New England crime boss Raymond Patriarca that provided vital information on the 1965 murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan.

"The Justice Department made it very difficult for this committee to conduct timely and effective oversight," the report said. "The FBI must improve management of its informant programs to ensure that agents are not corrupted. The committee will examine the current FBI's management, security, and discipline to prevent similar events in the future."

Lawmakers are pressing for more House hearings on the FBI's failure to cooperate.

"This is an unfinished project and I think the report acknowledges that," said one committee member, Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass.

"I would like to continue to investigate why the Justice Department was so recalcitrant in getting us the information. We should not tolerate that kind of behavior," he said.

The FBI said in a statement that it has taken "significant steps" to improve the use of informants, who are vital to many investigations.

A senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the bureau was not always as forthcoming as committee members wanted. The official said some information was withheld or delayed because it related to a court case involving FBI Agent John Connolly Jr., who was convicted last year of protecting his gangster informants.

The report concluded there is not enough evidence to find that former Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger used his political authority to punish those who investigated his brother, mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger.

Whitey Bulger, a former FBI informant who worked with Connolly, fled in 1995 and is on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list. He is being sought in connection with 21 murders.

The report said there were some inconsistencies in William Bulger's testimony. His lawyer, Thomas Kiley, said the report exonerates his client, who was given immunity to testify.

"For any thinking person, this should end it," said Kiley. "But there is a cadre of Bulger bashers here who have spread these street legends for years and I don't harbor any illusion they're going to stop."

The report, while broadly condemning the FBI's practices, focuses on the Deegan murder and law enforcement efforts to protect informants, including Jimmy "The Bear" Flemmi and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi.

Four men were wrongly convicted of Deegan's murder - two died in prison and two served more than 30 years in prison - all due to what officials concluded was false testimony and the FBI's efforts to protect informants.

Jimmy Flemmi died in prison while serving time for a different murder. Stephen Flemmi recently pleaded guilty to racketeering charges involving 10 murders. Former FBI agent H. Paul Rico, 78, was arrested near Miami last month on murder charges. He has denied he helped frame innocent men for the Deegan murder.

House Government Reform Committee report: http://reform.house.gov/GovReform/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID1885

Yep. Do as the FBI demands or face decades in prison on falsified evidence. Turn snitch, or they'll basically murder you.

Hell, if you really piss them off they might shoot your wife in the face, or burn your kids to death and them blame you for it. You might be able to defend yourself, if you're left alive.

As an added bonus, if you're an Eagle Scout driving the wrong kind of car at the wrong time of night, the FBI will listen to a drug addled informant trying desperately to save his own skin and pull you and your girlfriend over. When you try to comply with two masked men toting machine guns screaming at you, they'll put a 5.56 round into your jaw and then say it was all your fault.

But, they're helpless little babies in the face of foreign terrorists, so they need lots and lots of new powers.

Yea, that's the ticket.

Yep. Do as the FBI demands or face decades in prison on falsified evidence. Turn snitch, or they'll basically murder you.

Hell, if you really piss them off they might shoot your wife in the face, or burn your kids to death and them blame you for it. You might be able to defend yourself, if you're left alive.

But, they're helpless little babies in the face of foreign terrorists, so they need lots and lots of new powers.

Yea, that's the ticket.

Hey Dan!

This wasn't a 'failure' of the FBI. This was a deliberate, premeditated, concerted, and very succesful double murder committed by people who swore to 'uphold and defend the Constitution'.

So far, only one of them has been convicted.

This wasn't one rouge FBI agent. There's no way one G-10 in Boston could have pulled this off by himself. This kind of thing required what would be called 'conspiracy' if it were done by the average American.

It required the active involvement of FBI supervisors, lab techs, evidence techs, as well as both Federal and State prosecutors.

So Dan Burton is 'shocked' to find corruption in the Boston FBI office. Wow. Claude Raines redux or what.

If J. Edgar were still alive, he would have had these lying, perjuring accomplices to murder taken out back and quietly shot. Instead todays FBI 'stands by its men'. It's worse than disgusting. It's damned frightening.

4 innocent people were sent to prison. Two of them were on death row due to testimony the FBI knew was false. More murders were committed by 'informants' in the paid employ of the FBI and yet only one Government Agent has been convicted, let alone indicted or tried.

Some of us around here have said it for years. the FBI is 'above the law'. They can do whatever they want to. They can lie, they can cheat, they can even kill you and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it.

False evidence? No problem!

Perjured testimory? No big deal!

Murders committed by 'confidential informants'? That's just the 'cost of doing business'.

And if you actually catch them at it and try to sue because one of the CIs did something like, oh say, murder your husband the FBI will claim 'sovereign immunity'.

Great system ain't it.

I know I'll sleep better knowing that these brave G-men are protecting me from OBL and his ilk....

The bureau's conduct "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement," according to the final report from the House Government Reform Committee.

In 1967, McNairy County Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser was in the fight of his life with the owners and operators of a string of Roadhouses along Highway 45, most just across the state line in Alcorn County, Mississippi. On the 12th of August, 1967, following an early morning phone call at home informing him of a brutal fight taking place near a local church, the Sheriff hopped into his car and sped to the scene. Since he and his wife Pauline had been packing for a trip to visit her parents, she came along with him; if nothing else, she could run the radio in the car if there was more trouble than her husband could handle. It was a set-uo.

A stolen black Cadillac pulled up behind them, and from the passenger side of the Caddy, carefully aimed shots were fired, hitting both the sheriff and his wife. Pulling off the road to care for his wife's wounds, the carload of gunmen returned and opened fire again, this time blowing the sheriff's jaw apart. Pauline Pusser died at the scene; Buford Pusser survived to avenge her.

Though he claimed not to know who his attackers had been, he knew full well that two were Texas badmen, another, probably the driver, the son of an Oklahoma judge, and the probable triggerman a Boston mob shooter named Carmin Ray Gagliardi, known as Ray Gags on the Boston streets.

The presence of the Texans as extra muscle with shotguns in the event Pusser survived the rifleman's work was made possible through the gang's connections to casino and bank robberies pulled off by the gang; the criminally inclined judge's son was looking for a position within the structture of the *Dixie Mafia* whose foundation was under constannt consideration. And then there was the mob shooter from Boston....

Once Pusser recovered and left the hospital, the Texans were found shot to death and dumped in rivers, Gagliardi was shot by *someone* and also dumped into Boston's river. And the surviving driversurvived only by virtue of being jailed in Louisiana for a robbery in which the victim was killed; the others were hunted down one by one.

The question is, what was the connection to Boston's organized crime that brought the Eastern shooter to a remote Tennecceess highway to kill a rural sheriff and his wife? And was the Boston badman killed by the visiting sheriff, by his own crime family pasrtners for his sloppy work in not being more thorough when shooting Tennessee lawmen, or perhaps by those who were in the middle and had put the eastern hitman in touch with the southern outlaw gang.

But wouldn't it be ironic if the FBI was not only involved with the Boston mob, but was also connected to the attempted murder of a fellow lawman and the murder of his wife.

One thing is certain: for the rest of his life, Pusser had no use whatsoever for the FBI or most federal cops, and placed no trust in them. He viewed them as being just as corrupt as those who had killed his wife, and probably involved in her murder before, during and after the fact.

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