Freedom Lawyers of America

Ex-Prosecutor Tells of Ties Between F.B.I. and Mob
December 6, 2002
By FOX BUTTERFIELD

BOSTON, Dec. 5 - A former United States attorney in Boston
told a Congressional committee today that he knew that some
gangland informers were committing murders and that their
F.B.I. handlers had become personally involved with them.
But he said he took no action because he was intimidated by
the bureau.

"It would have precipitated World War III if I had tried to
do anything about F.B.I. informants," said the witness,
Jeremiah T. O'Sullivan, who was in charge of the New
England Organized Crime Strike Force and then United States
attorney here in the 1970's and 80's

In fact, Mr. O'Sullivan said, he once tried to sidestep the
Federal Bureau of Investigation by setting up an electronic
bug with the help of the Massachusetts state police in the
headquarters of James Bulger, known as Whitey, the leader
of the powerful Winter Hill gang. But the surveillance was
soon compromised, Mr. O'Sullivan said, most likely by an
F.B.I. agent who tipped off Mr. Bulger. Mr. Bulger had been
recruited as an F.B.I. informer.

After the bug was compromised, Mr. O'Sullivan told members
of the House Committee on Government Reform, the special
agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Boston office, Lawrence
Sarhatt, called him into his office. "He yelled at me,
cursed at me," Mr. O'Sullivan said of the F.B.I. official.
"He told me I should never have cooperated with the state
police."

"With the F.B.I, if you go against them, they will try to
get you," Mr. O'Sullivan said. "They'll cause major
administrative problems for me, as a prosecutor." Mr.
O'Sullivan was actually superior in rank inside the Justice
Department to the Boston F.B.I. agents.

The Committee on Government Reform, led by Representative
Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, has been investigating
how F.B.I. agents in Boston became corrupted by recruiting
underworld informers in their war on the Mafia starting in
the 1960's. Some of the gangsters, notably Mr. Bulger and
his deputy, Steven Flemmi, regularly entertained their
F.B.I. handlers or gave them gifts, and the F.B.I. agents
often provided them with confidential information about
government investigations against them or names of other
mobsters informing on them, according to court testimony.

One of these F.B.I. agents, John J. Connolly Jr., was
sentenced to 10 years in prison in September for
racketeering and obstructing of justice. Prosecutors said
Mr. Connolly essentially became a member of Mr. Bulger's
gang.

Mr. Bulger has been indicted in racketeering and
involvement in 22 murders. But he disappeared in 1995 after
Mr. Connolly tipped him off to the secret indictment,
according to testimony at Mr. Connolly's trial. Mr. Bulger
remains a fugitive and is on the F.B.I.'s Ten Most Wanted
List.

In separate testimony today, a Tulsa homicide detective,
Mike Huff, said the Tulsa County District Attorney has been
investigating a former Boston F.B.I. agent and is close to
indicting him for his involvement in the murder of a Tulsa
multimillionaire businessman, Roger Wheeler, on orders from
Mr. Bulger.

Sergeant Huff told the committee there was strong evidence
that H. Paul Rico, Mr. Connolly's predecessor in recruiting
members of the Winter Hill gang as F.B.I. informers, had
provided critical information used in Mr. Wheeler's
killing. Mr. Rico was subpoenaed by the committee last year
and refused to testify, taking his Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination.

Mr. Wheeler, then the chairman of the Telex Corporation,
was shot once between the eyes as he got in his car after
playing golf at the Southern Hills Country Club in 1981.

He was killed because he had learned that Mr. Bulger's gang
was skimming money from one of his businesses, World Jai
Alai, which ran gambling operations in Hartford and Miami,
according to testimony by the man who shot him, John
Martorano. Mr. Rico was in charge of security for World Jai
Alai at the time of the killing.

Sergeant Huff, who has investigated Mr. Wheeler's murder
for 21 years, said, "The F.B.I. and the U.S. Attorney's
office in Boston did not help us with the investigation."

"We were lied to," Sargeant Huff said. "They had targeted
the Wheeler case to not get solved."

As a result, even though the F.B.I. in Boston knew Mr.
Bulger was involved in the killing, the information was not
provided to the Tulsa police. "The F.B.I. didn't want the
embarrassment and Connolly didn't want his house of cards
to fall," Sergeant Huff said.

David Wheeler, a son of Mr. Wheeler, also testified,
saying, "Forgotten in all of this are the people the agents
are supposed to serve - people like my father."

A question hanging over the hearing today was whether
Whitey Bulger's brother, William M. Bulger, the president
of the University of Massachusetts and the former president
of the State Senate, will testify on Friday. William Bulger
has said very little over the years about his older
brother, insisting he knows nothing about his criminal
career.

But the committee has issued a subpoena for him to appear.
Steven Lynch, a Democratic representative on the committee
who lives in South Boston, the Bulgers' neighborhood, said
it was unclear whether Mr. Bulger would appear at all, or
appear and plead his Fifth Amendment right against
compelled self-incrimination, or try to fight testifying on
some procedural grounds.

One person listening to the testimony today, in the Suffolk
County Courthouse, was Joseph Salvatti. In 1967 Mr.
Salvatti was sentenced to life in prison for a murder
actually committed by an F.B.I. informer, and the bureau
allowed Mr. Salvatti and three other men to be wrongly
convicted, with the knowledge of J. Edgar Hoover.

"It's hard to sit listening, knowing the F.B.I. and the
U.S. Attorney's office are lying, said Mr. Salvatti, who
had his sentence commuted after serving 30 years in prison.
"The bottom line is, they don't care."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company