Black Mass

by Dick Lehr

  Not surprisingly, Connolly had emerged as the expert about Bulger and Flemmi inside the FBI office. If an agent had a question about Whitey’s personal history, he was sent to John Connolly, and usually John Morris was the one making the referral. Whitey’s rank in the underworld scheme? See Connolly. Whitey and drugs? See Connolly.

  MANY of the FBI documents about Bulger were simply invention—and at this Connolly became the master. He repeatedly took a dull nugget of Bulger information and tumbled it into glittering gold.

  There was the mention, for example, that Connolly made in a report to Sarhatt about the help Bulger gave the FBI in connection with a bank robbery over the Memorial Day weekend in 1980 at the Depositors Trust in Medford, Massachusetts. Connolly credited Bulger with being the “first source” to provide the names of the robbers. But it just wasn’t so. The morning after the robbery callers to police and other informants were naming the suspects. “I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t get it from Whitey Bulger,” said Medford police chief Jake Keating about early leads in the case. It took a few years to charge the robbers, but their identities, said Keating, were “common knowledge.”

  Connolly also gave Bulger credit for breaking open a murder case. Until Bulger had offered his helping hand, went a Connolly memo, the FBI had had “no positive leads” in the slaying of Joseph Barboza Baron, an underworld hitman who had turned into a valuable government witness. Baron was gunned down in San Francisco. In his memo, Connolly wrote that three months after the slaying Bulger had told him who set up Baron to be killed—a wiseguy named Jimmy Chalmas. In fact, Chalmas’s role in the murder was old news by the time Bulger mentioned it to Connolly. Chalmas was a prime suspect from the start. Baron had been shot outside Chalmas’s apartment. City homicide detectives had interrogated Chalmas that night. Following Bulger’s chat with Connolly, the FBI may have finally gone out and confronted Chalmas, but from the moment Baron died Chalmas was a hot lead. None of this was part of Connolly’s writings to Sarhatt. Nor was Sarhatt, in conducting the internal review of Bulger’s viability, supposed to dig up the rest of the story. He was, in theory, supposed to be able to rely on the completeness and veracity of his own field agent in Boston. Instead, he got Connolly’s angle, skewed in Bulger’s favor.

  Connolly knew how to hit the hot buttons as well. He told Sarhatt that Bulger had saved the lives of two FBI agents who’d worked undercover in two separate cases in the late 1970s. These may have been the most intriguing of all of Connolly’s claims, in part because he had no records to back him up. Throughout his years as a handler, Connolly filed hundreds of the reports, known as “209 inserts,” documenting fresh Bulger intelligence. They ranged from the sublime, such as information about important Mafia policymaking meetings, to the ridiculous, such as the scoop on Larry Zannino’s latest temper tantrum. But with agents’ lives supposedly hanging in the balance, oddly, perhaps even unbelievably, Connolly had not written up contemporaneous reports about Bulger’s aid. To explain the omission, Connolly insisted later that he’d had no reason to file reports, although Morris conceded that documenting help of this sort was standard FBI procedure.

  One of the two supposed life-saving instances was the old truck-hijacking case, Operation Lobster. In a memo to Sarhatt, Connolly revived the exaggerated claim that back in 1978 a Bulger tip enabled the FBI to “take steps to insure the safety of Special Agent Nicholas D. Gianturco.” In a follow-up report, Connolly reminded Sarhatt about the tip and added that Bulger had provided the information to protect FBI lives “at great personal risk” to his own life.

  Over time too, Connolly’s retelling of this Bulger moment grew more rarefied. “They saved one of my friends’ life,” he liked to say. Connolly could also count on Gianturco—to a point. Gianturco said Connolly had called and persuaded him not to meet with the hijackers. “He said they were going to kill me.” But pushed to say whether he indeed thought Bulger and Flemmi had saved his life, Gianturco was evasive. “I was glad that Mr. Bulger and Mr. Flemmi were kind of watching out for me.” He wouldn’t flat-out credit Bulger with saving his life. And Flemmi himself undercut Connolly’s take, later calling the information Bulger passed along an “accidental tip” about a possible shakedown, not a planned murder.

  Just as important, police supervisors of Operation Lobster said they did not recall any specific death threat to Gianturco. A plot to kill an FBI agent was not something any police official would ever forget, they said. And word of a planned hit would have set off internal alarms and been documented at the time, not just in a Connolly memo two years later. If anything like what Connolly claimed had actually happened, said trooper Bob Long, who had also supervised Operation Lobster, “it’s incredible that he would not have advised Gianturco’s immediate supervisors, who were responsible for his safety and security.

  “If you had information that someone was planning to kill an FBI agent, wouldn’t you want to monitor the suspect’s movements? Because if he didn’t succeed that day, there would be another day, and he’d keep trying.” None of the truck hijackers were ever tracked by investigators as potential assassins.

  The bundle of Connolly hype rescued Bulger from internal scrutiny, and the memos were part of a blizzard of paperwork assembled by Connolly and Morris that, like a high-gloss finish, sealed the FBI’s rosy view of Bulger and Flemmi. Lying and deceit were clearly on Morris’s mind. In his office he kept a copy of Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. He’d come across the book by Sissela Bok while taking a graduate course in ethics at Northeastern University. The book was heady and philosophical, not a how-to guide to lying, but it had captured his interest. He kept it near him and had marked up certain passages and underlined others. As he supervised Connolly and together they distorted the truth about Bulger and Flemmi to FBI superiors, Morris was flipping through a book with such chapters as “Lies in a Crisis,” “Lies Protecting Peers and Clients,” and “Justification.”

  BUT the early 1980s was not just a period of pushing paper. Besides customizing the FBI’s books, the agents were putting out some home cooking. The group’s social life took off. The inaugural dinner held at Morris’s home in Lexington in 1979, in part to celebrate the close call in the race-fixing indictment, had only broken the ice. Since then, Morris had hosted more dinners. Gianturco did too, at his suburban home in Peabody, north of Boston. Flemmi did his share, leaning on his mother to prepare an Italian spread for Bulger, Morris, Connolly, Gianturco, and other agents. The first of the Flemmi affairs was held at his parents’ home in the Mattapan section of Boston, but by the early 1980s his parents had moved into South Boston right next door to none other than Billy Bulger. (The houses faced one another.) Flemmi began hosting gatherings within arm’s reach of the most powerful politician in Massachusetts. Flemmi and Bulger even turned Flemmi’s mother’s property into a weapons depot. In an outdoor shed where most homeowners would keep a lawnmower, the gangsters accumulated what amounted to a small military arsenal. They stockpiled handguns, rifles, automatic weapons, shotguns, ammunition of all kinds and calibers, and even explosive devices, all of which were kept in a hidden compartment behind an interior wall in the shed.

  Over drinks and dinner it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between business and pleasure. John Connolly took care to act as a master of ceremonies, arranging the times, places, and guest lists. (“I never arranged for any of the meetings,” said Morris, even though he often hosted. “I never knew how to get in contact with them.”) Connolly seemed to fuss as well. Having persuaded Morris and Gianturco to open up their homes to the gangsters, he then wanted to make sure they behaved. Connolly, recalled Morris, did not want FBI agents treating Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi like run-of-the-mill snitches. They were to be shown the “special respect” they deserved.

  Even though the FBI in no uncertain terms banned socializing with informants, Connolly had proposed—and Morris readily accepted—a rationale for why the rules did not apply to them. Bulger and Flemmi, sai
d Morris, “were very, very, very well known in the crime community, and there were very few safe places that we could meet with them, and Connolly did not want to meet with them in the usual alternatives—hotel rooms and that sort of stuff. He wanted an atmosphere where it would be a little more relaxing, would be more sociable, more pleasurable, and that left very few alternatives, and I agreed to have them for dinner.”

  There were indeed people stalking Bulger and Flemmi—like state troopers. Years later the irony was not lost on the investigators from other police agencies: the gangsters had shaken the troopers tailing them by finding a safe haven and a hot meal in the homes of FBI agents.

  The FBI dinners were off the books—the agents never filed reports about them—and over fine food and fine wine the group was already waxing nostalgic about their times together. They chatted, said Flemmi, about “things that happened in the past, like the racetrack case.” The conversation was friendly and often featured, recalled Morris, “pretty strange things.” If Connolly was the emcee, Bulger was the chairman of the board, “talking about life in Alcatraz, talking about life—what it’s like being a fugitive, talking about family matters, talking in generalities about people.” He entertained the others with descriptions of taking LSD while he was in prison during the 1950s. Said Flemmi: “He was in Alcatraz when they closed it down. Then he went to Leavenworth, and he participated in a CIA program. The name of the program was Ultra. He was a volunteer in that program, the LSD program, for eighteen months. He was one of the people selected, because he was—he had such a high IQ.”

  Flemmi might offer some of his own stories, about living in Canada when he was a fugitive, but Bulger clearly commanded center stage. “Jim Bulger was the talker. Anyone who knows him will attest to that,” said Flemmi.

  Though Connolly frequently met privately with Bulger and Flemmi—on hundreds of occasions—the FBI dinner parties unfolded as a kind of biannual banquet. The agents and the gangsters took certain precautions for their evening affairs. To meet once to chat over beers at Bulger’s apartment in South Boston, Connolly and Morris parked their car several blocks away. “Connolly was familiar with the back alleys,” said Morris. The supervisor, meanwhile, was lost in South Boston. “I had no idea in the world where I was. And we took a series of back alleys and entered his apartment in a back alley.” Morris and Connolly both wore hats, a token stab at a disguise to conceal their faces. Bulger greeted them and served up St. Pauli Girl beer while Morris casually scanned issues of Soldier of Fortune magazine that Bulger had around.

  Morris was less concerned about security or startling his neighbors when hosting in suburban Lexington. “My neighbors wouldn’t have the slightest idea in the world who Bulger and Flemmi are.” Even so, some caution was always in order. “They came after hours of darkness. Sometimes they’d pull into the garage. They were always wearing hats.”

  Morris did, however, startle his wife, Rebecca. She was not happy about having reputed killers as house guests. The marriage was already strained, and the couple fought. In all his FBI years Morris had never done anything like this. Maybe he’d brought work home with him, but never two actual gangsters. Bulger and Flemmi now knew where he lived, now knew his family, could wonder if Morris made a practice of hosting informants, and, to discover their identities, might consider staking out the Morris home. To Rebecca Morris, the whole setup was just plain crazy. But John Morris prevailed, arguing with his wife about the necessity of this extraordinary move, about how special Bulger and Flemmi were. He would concede to his wife they were “bad guys,” but dinner was “necessary to inspire their trust.”

  It was all part of the inflation of Bulger and Flemmi. Morris was not surprised that his wife did not fully appreciate the unique deal he and Connolly had with Bulger and Flemmi. After all, she could not appreciate the continued blossoming of the intimacy the group had going, as it flowed from dinner parties to gifts. During the early 1980s the agents and informants began giving each other presents—at holidays, to mark special occasions, or simply because they were moved to give. Rebecca, John probably thought, was simply missing the obvious.

  CONNOLLY served as gift coordinator, bearing presents to the agents from the gangsters and vice versa. Gianturco got a black leather briefcase, a glass decorative statue, and a bottle of cognac. The second time Bulger came to his house for dinner, recalled Gianturco, he “brought some wineglasses. I think the ones I had were the $I.25 Stop & Shop’s. He brought a better set of wineglasses the next time. Usually Mr. Bulger would bring a bottle of wine or a bottle of champagne when he came up for dinner.”

  Gianturco happily reciprocated. While window-shopping during a trip to San Francisco, he spotted a belt buckle with an engraving of Alcatraz and thought of Whitey Bulger. He bought the buckle and then gave it to Connolly to give to Bulger. Bulger liked it and began wearing it. Connolly and Bulger, meanwhile, also exchanged books and wine, and Bulger once presented his handler with an engraved hunting knife.

  “I received a sweatshirt from Nick Gianturco,” Flemmi recalled. “I received a book from John Connolly.” Morris, he said, once gave him a painting of Korea by a Korean artist. “It was a nice painting.” Said Morris: “I had picked it up in the army. I had served in Korea, and he had served in Korea, and I gave him that painting.”

  Bulger noticed that the dinner table at Morris’s home lacked a bucket to keep wine chilled, so he surprised Morris with a gift of a silver wine bucket. The ornate gift infuriated Morris’s wife and sparked another round of marital grief. She didn’t want Bulger’s largesse and told her husband not to accept it. But Morris did, rationalizing again the need to maintain Bulger’s trust. Rebecca Morris banned the bucket from their home, and eventually John Morris, without ever telling Bulger, quietly threw it out.

  Bulger and Flemmi continued to ply Morris with fancy wine—here and there a $25 or $30 bottle of French bordeaux. “I don’t think that I articulated a specific interest in it,” said Morris. “I think that it evolved, and I believe it evolved from the standpoint where they first brought wine. I believe conversation flowed from that as to my interest in wine.”

  The two crime bosses even arranged once for a special delivery to Morris at the FBI office in Government Center in Boston. “Connolly gave it to me,” recalled Morris. “He said that he had something for me from these guys.” Morris was instructed to go to Connolly’s car in the parking garage. “I went down to the basement of the federal building, opened his trunk, and there was a case of wine.”

  It was as if the gangsters were probing Morris’s weak spot. He’d showed himself capable of losing it at the Colonnade Hotel. Indeed, Flemmi had kept the audiotape that Morris left behind that night as a souvenir. And even though Morris knew full well that the growing intimacy and gift-giving were clearly wrong, he couldn’t stop himself. It was as if he got a charge out of the bizarre alliance with Bulger and Flemmi. With a little alcohol, it all went down even more smoothly. Morris liked the two gangsters. He liked Connolly. They all seemed part of an important secret.

  In early June 1982 Morris left Boston to attend a two-week training session in Glynco, Georgia, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Sarhatt had approved the trip, as did the Boston office’s assistant special agent in charge, Bob Fitzpatrick. Morris was enrolled in a program entitled “Narcotics Specialization Training.” Even though another federal agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), already specialized in targeting drug traffickers, the FBI during the early 1980s was looking to enhance its own drug enforcement capabilities. Immediately Morris missed his girlfriend Debbie Noseworthy, and once in Georgia he got an idea.

  “I called Connolly,” said Morris, and he reminded Connolly of the offer Bulger and Flemmi had made: if he ever needed anything, just let them know. “So I asked Connolly: ‘Do you think they could arrange for an airline ticket?’

  “He said, ‘Yeah.’”

  John Connolly had taken Morris’s call at the Organized Crime Squad. Debbie
was seated nearby at her desk right outside Morris’s office. She could only wonder what Connolly and her boyfriend were discussing. Then Connolly hung up and left. He returned later, and he walked up to Debbie Noseworthy holding an envelope that he then gave to the FBI secretary.

  “He said that John wanted me to have this,” she recalled. “I asked what it was, and he said, ‘Well, look at it.’” Debbie opened the plain white envelope and counted $1,000 in cash. She was startled and asked where the money had come from. Using a cover story that he and Morris had concocted, Connolly explained that her boyfriend had been saving up money and hiding it in his desk for an occasion just like this one. Morris, said Connolly, wanted her to take the money and fly down to see him in Georgia.

  Debbie had not seen Connolly enter Morris’s office and go through the squad supervisor’s desk. She had been in her boss’s desk many times before and had never seen the money. But she wasn’t about to second-guess her good fortune. She was thrilled. Connolly, Debbie recalled, then said to her, “Isn’t that nice that you’re going to get to go?” Debbie arranged hastily to take a few vacation days. She rushed out and bought a ticket and then caught a departing flight from Logan Airport. Thanks to Connolly and Bulger, the couple were soon romancing in Georgia.

  SIX MONTHS after Morris sought his first payoff, he turned over supervision of the Organized Crime Squad to Jim Ring. Morris was named coordinator of a new FBI drug task force. It was early in 1983, and Morris was feeling a little burned out. The public reason for the burnout was legitimate and understandable. Morris had overseen a squad of agents through the spectacular but exhausting bugging of the Mafia’s Boston headquarters. The investigation was now in the hands of Ed Quinn, who was overseeing a group of agents carefully listening to and transcribing the FBI tapes. The evidence against Gennaro Angiulo and his associates was stunning, and all of it was in the Mafia’s own words. But Morris’s burnout had a private side to it too—he was now thoroughly compromised.