by Patrick H. Moore
Alleged Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger, 83, is on trial for allegedly killing or ordering the murders of 19 people while running Boston’s notorious Winter Hill Gang, which was known for running extortion and gambling rings (and settling scores when necessary).
Although the prosecution’s purpose in bringing Bulger to trial is clearly to convict him, a fascinating sub-plot has emerged. Mark Trumball of the Christian Science Monitor brings us the story:
The trial of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger is now focusing on FBI evidence claiming that Bulger was an informant – a claim he refutes. The court proceedings are showing an ugly side of the FBI. Informant or not, Whitey Bulger still making FBI look bad
Controversy surrounding the FBI took center stage in the trial of reputed gangster James “Whitey” Bulger Monday, with lawyers sparring over the agency’s flawed use of criminals as informants.
As might be expected, the prosecutors are claiming that Mr. Bulger spent years serving as an informant for the FBI. The prosecution has also presented evidence suggesting Bulger abused his secret role to help him get away with murder and other crimes.
Bulger’s attorneys, however, are putting a different spin on things. Citing corruption within the FBI’s Boston office, they are suggesting that there may be insufficient evidence to prove that Bulger was an informant.
Either way, FBI faces throughout the agency must be turning 50 shades of scarlet.
Officially, this high-profile criminal case is about whether Bulger will be found guilty of racketeering charges that include 19 murders and other organized-crime activities. But unofficially, the trial is also serving as a venue for airing missteps and corruption within law enforcement – most notably the FBI.
Criminal-justice experts are positing that theses peculiar events are emblematic of an era when FBI personnel were desperate to make headway against Italian organized crime — so desperate that they were willing to get pretty darned cozy with Bulger and his main crime partner, Stephen Flemmi. The problem is, of course, Bulger and company were big-time criminals in their own right and “appear to have gotten the best of the FBI relationship for years.”
Unsurprisingly, some family members of the victims who lost their lives as a result of this misalliance, find the whole murky affair deeply troubling.
“Did anybody not get immunity?… It seems like nobody’s going to jail here,” said Tom Donahue, the son of a 1982 Boston murder victim. Mr. Donahue explained to reporters outside 
of court on Monday that his father was killed in the crossfire in an eruption of sudden violence when one mobster FBI informant, Brian Halloran, was “whacked” outside a Boston restaurant by Bulger’s people because Bulger was afraid Halloran was going to “rat him out.” Mr. Donahue explained that his father was killed because he and Halloran were neighbors and his father happened to be giving Halloran a ride home.
Parenthetically, Halloran, Sr., and Donahue are two of Bulger’s 19 alleged murder victims.
One of the upcoming witnesses for the prosecution will be John Morris, a former FBI supervisor in Boston. Although Morris has been granted immunity from prosecution, this is not the case with all FBI personnel. For example, former FBI agent John Connolly is already in prison for accepting bribes from Bulger and Flemmi, and feeding them top-secret law enforcement information when he was supposed to be eliciting information from them.
Among other things, in 1995, Connolly warned Bulger that he was about to be indicted which enabled Bulger to flee Boston. Connolly picked up a second-degree-murder conviction in Florida in 2008 for telling Bulger nearly 30 years previously that one of his group’s members was going to become a cooperating witness — information that led to the guy being murdered.
On Monday at Bulger’s trial, the prosecution presented evidence centered on Bulger’s FBI informant file.
Bulger’s team, however, “scored a victory by getting Judge Denise Casper to sustain a key objection.” Somewhat remarkably, the judge actually ruled that prosecutors “can’t imply that the statements attributed by the FBI to Bulger were actually made by Bulger.”
This does not mean, however, that Bulger will ultimately shed the “informant” label. Prosecuting attorney Fred Wyshak presented a great deal of information suggesting that Bulger was indeed providing tips to the FBI.
And it should be remembered that although these proceedings are clearly sullying the FBI’s reputation, “the jury is unlikely to view Bulger as a something akin to an underworld saint.”