Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down

by Robert Fitzpatrick

  There were several moments during my testimony before Judge William Young that caused a stir. The government attorneys, still smarting, took a couple of swipes at me, calling my integrity into question, raising the Cape Cod shooting incident yet again, and alluding to the cover-up Greenleaf had accused me of. They were intimating that I had gotten censured over it.

  “They are lying,” I told the judge.

  Judge Young simply posed to me the same questions that the government attorneys had. “Let me ask you, then,” he said. “Did you get in trouble over your actions regarding this incident?”

  “No, Your Honor, absolutely not,” I replied, to which the judge stated simply, “Fine,” and resumed the trial.

  My testimony, as in the McIntyre case, was centered on my efforts to close Bulger as an FBI informant being curtailed and waylaid at every juncture. In the end, an everfrustrated Judge Young agreed. At one point, he said, “I’m prepared to find there is a massive and widespread cover-up going on here.”

  In May 2009, Judge Young also awarded an $8.5 million judgment to the families of Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue since the FBI had turned a blind eye to their murders at the hands of Whitey Bulger in 1982. (The case was later overturned on appeal based on a procedural technicality—the family of Michael Donahue had waited too long to file.) A month later Judge Young awarded $6.25 million to the family of Richie Castucci. Young was assigned both cases after Judge Lindsay, who’d presided over the McIntyre trial, died in March of that year. But, as in the McIntyre trial, Lindsay had already issued his rulings, leaving it to Young only to determine how much the government should pay up.

  There were other cases filed, including one by the widow of John Callahan, and many are still winding their way through a system of justice that has failed so many at every other juncture. But the Connolly, Salvati, and McIntyre decisions shed light at last on my claims that had for so long remained in the dark. In that sense, my life has come full circle: from a young boy listening to This Is Your FBI, to a twenty-year-plus career with the Bureau, to never letting go of my convictions after my departure, to finally seeing those convictions rewarded. I take great pride and comfort, even solace, in that sense of closure, but not pleasure. There’s no pleasure, because none of the trials that have been or will be should ever have happened.

  Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity …

  If the FBI had just stuck to its motto, this never would’ve happened. If the agents had stuck to their oath, things would have been different.

  The vindication achieved in these court findings restored at least a measure of my dream to me. And sometimes, once in a great while, I awaken to the reverie of soft murmurs of voices acting out the night’s episode of This Is Your FBI. The words of my boyhood heroes sift down the hall into my bedroom, just as they did at the Mount, until they slowly dissipate, leaving a smile on my face as I drift back to sleep.

  EPILOGUE

  In the middle of the night of June 23, 2011, I received a call from a major TV group informing me Whitey Bulger was apprehended in Santa Monica, California, with his girlfriend Catherine Greig. Bulger, now eighty-one, was arrested following a tip from a woman in Iceland. The media jumped on that revelation, finding it incredible that it took a woman from Iceland to finally bring to a close a drama that had been going on since Bulger’s disappearance in 1995. Over the years the FBI had battled the perception that it had not tried hard enough to find Bulger, despite listing him as the number two man on their Most Wanted list, just behind Osama Bin Laden. And in ironic counterpoint, he was captured just a few months following Bin Laden’s execution at the hands of Navy SEALs in Pakistan. Both fugitives hiding in plain sight.

  The comparison does not end there. Lenin once wrote that the purpose of terror is to terrify, and there is no more apt description of Whitey Bulger than that. The man who tortured and murdered John McIntyre, the man who strangled Debra Davis, may have also terrified the FBI for the information he could reveal about his sordid relationship with the Bureau and the fact that he provided virtually nothing in exchange for the protection afforded him. Between the time I recommended Bulger be closed as an informant in March 1981 and the time of his disappearance in 1984, at least eight people fell to his murderous hand, three of them informants willing and able to testify against him. Their names, which bear repeating, were Roger Wheeler, Debra Davis, Arthur “Bucky” Barrett, Deborah Husey, Michael Donahue, Brian Halloran, John Callahan, and John McIntyre.

  And now he’s been brought to justice, soon to stand trial before another in a long line of district court judges who have presided over cases in which the FBI’s complicity in Bulger’s murderous rise to criminal power first came to legal light. In the information-laden, explosive weeks after Bulger was captured I was contacted by a slew of media outlets, among them the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the New York Times, Fox, CBS, and NPR. All of them begging me to tell the truth no one wanted to hear during my tenure in Boston. I thought I’d achieved my vindication in the various trials that affirmed and corroborated so many of my claims that had fallen on deaf ears for so long.

  I was wrong.

  My true vindication has come now, in the court of public opinion, where the truth has finally come out. The Boston Globe ran an article entitled “Here’s to Honest Cops Who Made a Difference,” mentioning “Bob Fitzpatrick, a good FBI Agent who tried to save his agency from the rot that was Whitey Bulger.” NPR/WBUR ran a story called “The FBI Agent Who Really Wanted ‘Whitey’” that was broadcast across New England and proclaimed, “When Bob Fitzpatrick was brought into Boston as second in command of the FBI office in the early 1980s, it didn’t take him long to figure out something wasn’t right.”

  I echoed the perspective of a lawyer with South Boston roots named Ray Jennings III who reflected on hearing tales of Whitey Bulger from both his father and grandfather. In a July 11, 2011, Boston Globe article, he rightfully credited Lehr and O’Neill’s Black Mass with finally exposing the truth behind the legend. Only one thing was missing.

  “I hope we all have the opportunity to finally hear the ending,” he told reporter Nancy Harris.

  * * *

  A short time after things settled down, I visited Mount Loretto, perhaps for the last time. I was surprised to see how it had all changed. As I turned the street corner, there was no fear anymore; the Gothic cathedral was there, the administrative house was there, the huge playing fields, but little else. Appropriately enough, it was a misty, rainy day, with gentle drops enhancing my melancholy thoughts. The bridge to the dining hall was gone, along with the cottages that held us together as young lads. The steam pipes were gone, no more hissing and clanking, and no more little boys hanging from them for dear life.

  The “stone child” raised in that orphanage was still rooted in my soul. Here I learned to fight the good fight and never stopped fighting. Now that another chapter of the story is out, some former FBI agents commend me for falling on my sword while others still turn a blind eye to the FBI’s complicity. New court appearances, more depositions, and additional trials await me, as well as other names from a past so long shrouded in darkness now finally assured of seeing the light.

  This story has not ended, not even close.

  I walked to the Mount cemetery, strewn with unmowed grass, and found Father Kenny’s grave site. He had made monsignor before his death, according to the simple headstone, but he’ll always be Father Kenny to me. I chatted silently with the good father and told him what had happened. He didn’t chide me for being scrupulous in this confession, even when I paraphrased his own words back to him, “There’s not a more honorable thing in this world to me than being an FBI agent.”

  I knew in my heart I’d always done the honorable thing and I believe Father Kenny knows that, too. Maybe that’s what he meant all along. I try to hold on to him in my mind, as I feel memories of him and the Mount slipping away no matter how hard I try not to forget.

  Sister Mary Assumpta is gone as well, alon
g with her radio show, This Is Your FBI—a memory that, except for those occasional nights when I think I can still hear it, is fading, too.

  APPENDIX CONTENTS

  Appendix 1

  Letter from J. Edgar Hoover commending Robert Fitzpatrick for his work in the Bombings in Mississippi investigation.

  Appendix 2

  Memo from ASAC Weldon Kennedy, August 6, 1980, detailing his report on the meeting called by Colonel O’Donovan of the Massachusetts State Police.

  Appendix 3

  A glowing Performance Appraisal Report from June 29, 1984, on Bob Fitzpatrick, written by his superior, SAC James Greenleaf.

  Appendix 4

  A memo circulated by James Greenleaf from the Attorney General instructing all agents to report any suspicions of ethical or criminal misconduct immediately.

  Appendix 5

  A memo written and filed by Robert Fitzpatrick on June 7, 1985, charging SAC Greenleaf with alleged disclosure of information.

  Appendix 6

  A portion of Mr. Fitzpatrick’s deposition in the McIntyre case in which he details his suspicions and testifies about what happened after he issued the June 7, 1985, memo.

  NOTES

  General sources include author’s personal notes, recollections, daybook entries plus personal discussions with Colonel John O’Donovan, Dick Bates, Joe Yablonski, Jim Knotts, and Larry Sarhatt, as well as reports to FBI, DOJ, and federal courts.

  PROLOGUE: Murder of John McIntyre

  According to testimony: Descriptions of McIntyre’s murder drawn from court testimony and/or depositions and plea agreements by Stephen Flemmi, John Martorano, and Kevin Weeks; testimony from the 2006 McIntyre trial; sourcing from the Boston Globe, and The Brothers Bulger by Howie Carr (Grand Central, 2006, pages 265–66).

  Torture of McIntyre: Accusations supported by findings against FBI from decision by Judge Reginald Lindsay of the district court, upheld by the appellate court, finding the FBI complicit in McIntyre’s murder and ordering a $3.1 million judgment. Judge Lindsay wrote in part: “For decades preceding the McIntyre murder, agents of the FBI protected Bulger and Flemmi as informants by shielding them from prosecution for crimes they had committed.”

  In upholding Judge Lindsay’s decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit went on to say that, “The McIntyre leak violated a bright-line law enforcement rule that informant identity never be revealed, and put at risk the life of an individual who was helping the FBI.”

  Part One: Coming to Boston

  CHAPTER 1

  ABSCAM and arrest of Senator Harrison Williams: As detailed by Time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924247,00.html.

  Harrison Williams’s conviction: Senator Harrison Williams was convicted of nine counts of bribery and conspiracy. He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to three years in prison. He died on November 20, 2001: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/nyregion/ex-senator-harrison-a-williams-jr-81-dies-went-to-prison-over-abscam-scandal.html.

  CHAPTER 3

  Word was the agents there had taken their mandate: Internal FBI memo dated August 6, 1980, to Boston SAC Lawrence Sarhatt from ASAC Weldon L. Kennedy. (See Appendix.)

  Jerry Angiulo: Jerry Angiulo’s life and status as a mob boss was neatly summed up in his Boston Herald obituary in August 2009: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1194144.

  Colonel O’Donovan: Suspicions of Colonel O’Donovan of Massachusetts State Police raised in memo referenced immediately above.

  CHAPTER 4

  McDonald and Sims: The status of Joe McDonald and James Sims as associates of Bulger and Flemmi and members of the Winter Hill Gang confirmed in Black Mass by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (New York: Harper Collins Perennial, 2001, pages 65, 68).

  Depiction of the meeting detailed here drawn from knowledge of former FBI agent Dick Bates and outgoing Boston office ASAC Joe Yablonski. Further affirmed later in testimony by John Morris in Wolf hearings after being granted immunity.

  Connolly and Castucci: Complicity of agent John Connolly in the murder of Richie Castucci supported by a superseding criminal indictment unsealed on October 11, 2000, accusing John Connolly of “leaking information to Bulger and Flemmi that led directly to the murders of three potential witnesses against the gang: Brian Halloran, John Callahan, and a third informant named Richard Castucci” (Black Mass, page 327). Also reported in a Boston Herald story that same week entitled “Blood on His Hands.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The MSP didn’t trust: Colonel O’Donovan’s suspicions, as relayed to author, were the subject of an internal FBI memo from ASAC Weldon L. Kennedy to Boston SAC Lawrence Sarhatt, August 6, 1980.

  racehorse fix case: Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi’s part in the 1979 Race Fix case detailed in the testimony of Jeremiah O’Sullivan before the House Government Reform Committee 2002 as reported in the Third Report by the Committee on Government Reform entitled “Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants (pages 5–6): http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5997413/Everything-Secret-Degenerates-The-FBI’s-Use-of-Murderers-as Informants.

  This is further supplemented by John Morris’s own testimony under grant of immunity during the 1998 Wolf hearings. As the Boston Globe has written: “Granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony during 1998 federal court hearings, Morris confirmed scathing allegations of FBI misconduct, admitting that he had alerted Flemmi and Bulger to an investigation targeting bookmakers in 1988 and had asked a federal prosecutor to keep them out of a 1979 indictment for fixing horse races”: http://www.boston.com/news/packages/whitey/characters/morris.htm.

  One Boston agent, Jim Knotts, even insisted that John Connolly was fictionalizing information: This and additional allegations lodged on these pages further supported by “The Official Bulger FBI Files: Some Tall Tales” by Dick Lehr and the Globe staff, Boston Globe, July 21, 1998: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/1998/07/21/the_official_bulger_fbi_files_some_tall_tales/?page=2.

  CHAPTER 6

  “to insure that [informants] are not provided any information”: from the FBI Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines, pages 137–38, 1978.

  I was on special assignment: Author’s part in the Bombings in Mississippi investigation detailed in Heritage: The FBI Oral History Project, as supported by court documents, author’s FBI personnel file, and testimony in federal court (SUPRA).

  CHAPTER 7

  Author’s account of his role in the Martin Luther King assassination detailed in Heritage: The FBI Oral History Project, as supported by court documents and author’s FBI personnel file.

  Depiction of author’s interview with Bulger has been previously reported on 60 Minutes and the National Geographic documentary Bullets Over Boston.

  CHAPTER 8

  My two-page report: Author’s two-page memo recommending Bulger be closed as informant allegedly lost, a fact testified to by author during the McIntyre trial and Wolf hearings as supported by trial transcripts. Its existence has never been the subject of any contention, except in findings against the FBI.

  CHAPTER 9

  Teddy Deegan was described: Story of the murder of Teddy Deegan by Joseph Barboza, and covered up by FBI agents Paul Rico and Dennis Condon, was proven in court, a case in which the FBI was held liable for criminal wrongdoing and ordered to pay $101.7 million in damages to the plaintiffs (“Court Frees Limone After 33 Years in Prison,” by Ralph Ramalli, Boston Globe, January, 6, 2001). The Obama Justice Department, and Elena Kagan as solicitor general opted against appeal. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/05/01/us_wont_appeal_verdict_in_case_of_four_framed_by_fbi/.

  The House Government Reform Committee also weighed in on this to a great degree in the Third Report by the Committee on Government Reform entitled “Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants” (pages 5–6): http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5997413/Everything-Secret-Degenera
tes-The-FBI’s-Use-of-Murderers-as-Informants.

  CHAPTER 10

  “The successful prosecution of these subjects”: Associated Press, July 28, 2002: http://truthinjustice.org/blood-bargain.htm.

  Barboza decided to get even: Account of Joseph Barboza’s changing his story supported by,

  Before long, however, he was threatening to recant his testimony unless given $9,000 for plastic surgery to change his appearance. If Barboza recanted, convictions “might be overturned and plunge the government into protracted and acrimonious litigation,” federal prosecutors Edward F. Harrington and Walter T. Barnes warned their supervisor in Washington. In their Feb. 12, 1970, memo, they urged that Barboza be given the money. Six months later, Barboza did recant—but soon changed his mind and stood by his original story.

  Associated Press, July 28, 2002: http://truthinjustice.org/blood-bargain.htm.

  “What do you want from me? Tears?”: From government transcripts as reported in The Brothers Bulger (page 399).