Posted on 11/23/2002 3:46:53 AM PST by ninonitti
A congressional panel will grill two former Massachusetts U.S. Attorneys next month about the government's ties to mob informants while the taxpayers' bill for related civil suits is soaring.
The House Committee on Government Reform announced yesterday it will hold a Dec. 5 hearing in Boston to question former top prosecutors Paul Markham and Jeremiah T. O'Sullivan.
Markham led the U.S. Attorney's Office during mob prosecutions in the 1960s while O'Sullivan was U.S. Attorney when the FBI used informants James ``Whitey'' Bulger and Stephen ``The Rifleman'' Flemmi during the 1980s.
``These events are extraordinarily important and Congress must be thorough in its investigation,'' the committee's chief counsel James Wilson said yesterday in Washington.
O'Sullivan was called to testify during federal hearings in 1998 but suffered a heart attack and was never questioned.
With $2 million in lawsuits against the government over murders allegedly committed by criminal informants, new details emerged yesterday about the costs for defending former FBI agents and officials in the cases.
Dan Rea of WBZ-TV reported yesterday the government has authorized payment for private attorneys at rates of up to $200 an hour to defend the former agents and officials.
Each lawyer may bill a maximum of 120 hours per month in the cases for a possible total of $240,000 per month spent on the 10 defendants, the station reported.
In addition, a Department of Justice staff attorney defends the government in the cases now before three federal judges.
``I for one can't fathom it,'' U.S. Rep. William Delahunt (D-Quincy) told WBZ. ``Knowing the DOJ has a civil division that has the obligation of representing the government and goverment employees . . . why do we need to have the taxpayers absorb additional costs?''
The government is not paying civil legal fees for disgraced former FBI agents John J. Connolly Jr. and John Morris. Connolly, who is serving 10 years for racketeering with Bulger, has a private attorney. Morris, who accepted a plea agreement, is representing himself.
A federal judge did approve taxpayer-funded criminal defense for Connolly, who is now appealing his May conviction.
O'Sullivan pulled the heart attack scene like the mob guys did in the movie "Casino"
This should be a good show
I'm going to send a few questions for the committee to pose to these pillars of rectitude.
I'm sure other freepers could come up with their own questions they'd like answered by these two under the pains and penalties of perjury.
I wonder if they'll get their own lawyers to plead the fifth or hit us with the bill?
And didn't Weld resign from said post in protest of Ed Meese accepting a pair of cufflinks from South Korea's ambassador...calling it "appearance of corruption"?
And didn't he get real buddy-buddy with Sinkmeister, and claimed "his wife" was the one who donated $$$ to the Klinton Legal Defense Fund, and cSlick was innocent?
So when will Pink Floyd's name surface in relation to that Out-Of-Control corrupt FBI office hand in hand with the WORST mob scum...oh, BTW..."Whitey" Bulger IS the brother of former Senate President Billy Bulger...now big-shot at U-Mass I believe...Billy was known locally as "the Corrupt Midget" thanks to Howie Carr....
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