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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...

Once a decorated cop, Frank Sheehan spent the past two decades of his life living with labels he despised: rogue cop, leader of a crew of renegade detectives known as the ``Boston Seven,'' and ex-con. Sheehan and six other Boston cops were indicted in 1988 for providing protection to bar owners in exchange for free food and cash bribes after a six-year federal investigation. All seven were convicted and some - including Sheehan - were sent to prison. In 1998 John Morris, the lead FBI agent in charge of the investigation into the Boston Seven, confessed to being a rogue...

TULSA, Okla. - Along with framed mug shots of Pretty Boy Floyd and various members of Ma Barker's gang, it is one of the first pictures visitors see when stepping into the detective's division at Tulsa police headquarters. The caption underneath the stark black-and-white photo reads simply: ``Electric Chair in McAlester, Oklahoma.'' A man with his back to the camera rests his hands on a chain-link cage that surrounds this grim little throne of wood, straps and wires. There is a drain on the stone floor. Four words hang just above the man's head: ``CRIME DOES NOT PAY.'' ``There was...

<p>The jury got it wrong when it acquitted former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. of leaking information that prompted his longtime informants, James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, to kill two men, according to court documents unsealed yesterday.</p>

LOWELL, Mass. (Reuters) - University of Massachusetts President William Bulger said on Wednesday he was resigning, weeks after he was forced to testify in Congress about his ties to his brother -- one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives. Bulger, once the most powerful Democratic politician in the state, announced he was stepping down two months after the state's Republican governor publicly urged him to resign amid an uproar over his congressional testimony. Bulger said a "calculated political assault" against him was threatening the financial health of the public university. "I hope that the step I take today will be...

LOWELL, Mass. - University of Massachusetts President William M. Bulger resigned Wednesday after months of increasing pressure over his role in the federal investigation of his fugitive mobster brother. His resignation - the result of what he called a ``a calculated political assault'' against the university - is effective Sept. 1. The board of trustees immediately voted to accept the resignation, and have agreed to pay him more than two years' salary in a severance package worth close to $1 million. ``I increasingly believe that the university and the Board of Trustees should not be subjected to further assaults. I...

The Boston FBI and its Justice Department bosses allowed mob informants to lie and commit multiple murders for four decades during ``one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement,'' House investigators concluded in a final report for Congress. Federal law enforcement did ``incalculable damage to the public's respect for the rule of law'' through actions in Boston from 1965 until now, House Government Reform Committee lawyers said in a report titled, ``Everything Secret Degenerates: The Justice Department's Use of Murderers as Informants.'' The evidence unraveled was so threatening to the government that the FBI offered a...

Congressman Dan Burton yesterday called for further investigation into why Boston FBI agents did not act sooner to open James ``Whitey'' Bulger's safe deposit box in London given that they knew about the box for six years, according to one source. Burton, who suggested federal marshals take over the case from the FBI, said: ``I think in two months, three months, if they haven't gotten the job done, we might do whatever we can to bring in the U.S. marshals or whatever agency we can to get this done.'' Burton's committee has spent two years investigating the FBI's ties to...

The FBI received detailed information at least six years ago that fugitive crime boss James J. ``Whitey'' Bulger had a safe deposit box at Barclays Bank in London, but did not take the steps necessary to open it up until last fall. Soon after Bulger became a federal fugitive in January 1995, agents in the FBI's Boston office interviewed his longtime girlfriend, Teresa M. Stanley, who told them about the safe deposit box and its location, sources familiar with the Bulger investigation confirmed. But the FBI did not pursue the information until approximately four years later, when agents approached Stanley...

There is the picture of James J. ``Whitey'' Bulger with a fake mustache penciled above his top lip like Groucho Marx. There is another of Whitey wearing Mr. Peepers glasses, and one more of our favorite fugitive psychopath with a full head of virtual hair. Yesterday, we were told these three tired mug shots, along with other Whitey tidbits, would be spread out across the vastness of cyberspace, all to pump a wee bit o' life into the moribund, 8-year search for The White Man. A week ago, Billy Bulger invoked his Fifth Amendment ``privilege,'' essentially telling Congress and everyone...

Citing his Fifth Amendment rights, UMass President William Bulger has refused to answer questions from a congressional committee investigating the FBI's use of mob informants. Committee chairman Dan Burton immediately adjourned the hearing, moments after it had began. As the hearing got under way this morning in the McCormack federal office building in Boston, Bulger's lawyer asked Burton to postpone his client's testimony. When that request was denied, Bulger himself asked that the proceedings be moved behind closed doors. The committee voted unanimously against that request as well. Burton then asked Bulger about any conversations he had with his brother,...

University of Massachusetts President William M. Bulger, who received a subpoena yesterday from a Congressional panel probing FBI corruption, has been in contact with his fugitive brother since the notorious informant fled Boston seven years ago, a source said yesterday. The investigative source said the House Committee on Government Reform on Friday should ask William Bulger ``whether he has talked to (James ``Whitey'' Bulger) since he's been a fugitive, which we know he has.'' Federal marshals served a subpoena on Bulger, 68, through his Boston attorney Thomas R. Kiley yesterday afternoon after Bulger refused to appear voluntarily at the committee's...

The Corrupt Midget is going to have to take the Fifth Amendment. It's as simple as that. If Billy Bulger gives that congressional committee anything beyond his name, rank and serial number next week, he's gone. After a 35-year reign of terror that piled up scores of bodies, the last of the Bulger mob is on the spot. And this time, no Jerry O'Sullivan or Mike Dukakis or John Connolly will step up to put the fix in. Bulger is fresh out of useful idiots to sweep everything under the rug and make sure that any honest copper who squawks...

University of Massachusetts President William M. Bulger was resisting efforts last night by a congressional committee to grill him about his notorious gangster brother, James J. ``Whitey'' Bulger. The House Committee on Government Reform, which is probing FBI corruption in Massachusetts, yesterday announced plans to question Bulger about his brother's relationship with federal law enforcement at hearings next week in Boston. But, according to a committee source, Bulger's lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, called the panel and said the former Massachusetts Senate president had no intention of testifying, citing a scheduling conflict. Kiley was told the committee would issue a subpoena...

<p>BOSTON -- Former FBI agent John Connolly, who had been credited with helping to cripple the New England Mafia, was sentenced Monday to more than 10 years in prison for protecting his informants in exchange for information.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro had twice rejected motions from both the prosecution and the defense to deviate from federal guidelines, which called for a sentence of eight years, one month to 10 years, one month.</p>

<p>BOSTON -- For more than 20 years, FBI headquarters in Washington knew that its agents in Boston were using professional killers and mob leaders as informants and shielding them from prosecution for serious crimes including murder, the Associated Press has learned.</p>

Their millionaire father was executed at his golf course by Boston gangsters working as informants for the FBI, but now the Justice Department says the Wheeler family and other victims of James ``Whitey'' Bulger's gang should get nothing for their losses. In documents released yesterday in federal court, Justice Department attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay to throw out the Wheelers' case against the FBI for filing the $860 million lawsuit too late. Opting once again to use a ``statute of limitations defense'' in a Bulger-era civil suit against the government, DOJ argues the clock started ticking four...

Former FBI Agent John J. Connolly Jr. was not some good guy gone astray. He wasn't just some intense agent who one fine day was led down the garden path by the bad guys he had to deal with day in and day out. That's little more than a fairy tale. The sorry fact is that John Connolly was corrupt at every level, a cancer within the agency, a man who lied and cheated and sullied everything he touched, and who didn't care whose reputation he damaged in the process. And while yesterday's jury verdict was something of a mixed...

James J. ``Whitey'' Bulger's loyal sidekick Kevin J. Weeks testified yesterday that Bulger routinely handed out Christmas bribes, including $5,000 to FBI special agent John J. Connolly one year and other amounts to as many as 20 Boston cops. ``He used to say Christmas was for cops and kids,'' said Weeks, who claims Bulger instructed him to give Connolly the cash because Bulger was heading to a party at the home of then-Boston Bruin Chris Nilan. The special ``EX fund'' swelled to as much as $105,000 at one time to cover payoffs to lawmen and donations to Bulger's favorite causes,...

University of Massachusetts President William M. Bulger asked FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. more than 20 years ago to keep his gangster brother James J. ``Whitey'' Bulger ``out of trouble,'' a Winter Hill Gang hit man told a federal jury yesterday during shocking testimony also linking the retired agent to two mob murders. John Martorano, a remorseless killer of 20 men, claimed Whitey Bulger told him the Bulgers had a friend at the FBI after William helped Connolly escape poverty and the siren song of crime in their South Boston neighborhood. ``He said he was told that Connolly owed...