by Dick Lehr
Instead, Connolly and Morris and the Boston FBI office had fashioned a side deal, a fine-print, invisible-ink addendum of sorts. It was simple and relatively straightforward. It called for agents to commit crimes to protect the two informants. Up had become down.
Sometimes the FBI protective zeal extended beyond Bulger himself to include sidekicks on Bulger’s rim. Bars on the lower end of West Broadway were letting out in the early morning hours of Mother’s Day 1986. A pop-pop of gunshots rang out, and in a car parked across from the entrance of Triple O’s, Tim Baldwin, twenty-three, of South Boston, an ex-con who’d just gotten out of jail, slumped forward, dead.
Within days Boston police homicide detectives had a suspect—twentysix-year-old Mark Estes, another ex-con who’d been drinking inside Triple O’s just prior to the killing. Police learned that two weeks earlier Estes had been beaten by Baldwin with a tire iron in a dispute over a girlfriend. Police had eyewitnesses to the shooting among the hundred or so people spilling out of the bars at closing time. The witnesses told police they saw Estes shoot Baldwin, saw Estes shoot at bystanders as he fled, and saw Baldwin commandeer a car driven by a woman in a futile attempt to escape.
But at a court hearing in late June the case against Estes hit a big-time snag. The witnesses recanted their identification. The murder charge was dismissed, and afterward police complained about the long-standing neighborhood “code of silence”: residents would balk at cooperating with the authorities. “I’m from South Boston,” shrugged one of the witnesses, trying to explain the turnabout to the judge. “We keep things to ourselves.”
Prosecutors vowed to continue a grand jury investigation, and by Labor Day a subpoena to appear at the grand jury was issued to Kevin O’Neil. The Bulger protégé had been running Triple O’s the night of the murder, and Sergeant Detective Brendan Bradley of the Boston police homicide squad said he had gotten information that O’Neil “knew all the details of the murder, including the name of the perpetrator.” Prosecutors wanted O’Neil to go before a grand jury and give them Estes.
But the Bulger gang and the FBI saw the subpoena differently—as a nuisance. Bradley came into work on September 5, 1986, and found a telephone message. FBI agent John Connolly had called. Bradley returned the call. “Connolly said that he wanted to talk.” They agreed to meet for coffee three days later in the lobby of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, where the FBI had its Boston bureau.
Bradley arrived first. “Connolly came out of an elevator carrying a cup of coffee for himself.” The agent was apologetic that his other hand was empty, saying, “The girls in the office love me and always buy me coffee.” What’s a popular guy to do? The two investigators went and got Bradley a cup and huddled off to the side. “What are you doing to my friend?” Connolly asked the cop.
The agent explained that he knew all about the subpoena served on O’Neil. O’Neil, said Connolly, was from a good South Boston family, and his brother was an injured Boston firefighter. He was “a good shit.”
Bradley explained that they were talking about a murder investigation, and O’Neil could apparently help the police. Connolly was unmoved. “But he’s a good guy.” Besides, he said, the dead man was “a piece of shit.”
The message was simple: a “good shit” beats a “piece of shit” any day.
Connolly did not “ask directly to withdraw the subpoena to O’Neil,” but Bradley left with the impression “that was the purpose of the conversation.” O’Neil eventually did appear before the grand jury, but he refused to testify. He cited his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Homicide detectives chased other leads; nothing broke and the investigation fizzled. Estes was a free man.
Immediately afterward, Bradley told a colleague and two homicide prosecutors about the disturbing lobbying on behalf of a Bulger protégé, apparently to “squash a grand jury subpoena.” Years later one of the prosecutors said that he did not recall Bradley complaining about Connolly. John Kiernan, a self-described friend of Connolly’s, said he did not “believe Connolly would ever do such a thing.” But the other prosecutor clearly recalled hearing from Bradley right after the detective had had coffee with the FBI agent.
James Hamrock said he had actually considered subpoenaing Connolly to the grand jury “to testify about his role and knowledge of the matter.” But to avoid worsening the already poor relations between the FBI and local prosecutors, Hamrock did not. Like others before him, he let the Connolly talk go.
IN TERMS of FBI housekeeping, John Connolly was not acting alone in keeping the Bulger house in order. John Morris was now the supervisor of a white-collar squad that mainly pursued public corruption, and in early 1985 he was running an investigation that had started as an organized crime case. The original targets were two veteran bookmakers operating in the Roxbury section of Boston, John Baharoian and Steve Puleo. Baharoian ran a gambling business out of his run-down Avenue Variety on Blue Hill Avenue. The shelves were stocked with dust and goods with expired sale dates.
Investigators knew the convenience store was a front for one of the busiest bookie joints in that part of the city. They also believed that Baharoian paid tribute to Flemmi. But then investigators began to develop evidence that Baharoian was also bribing several Boston police officers for protection. Once that happened, the case was transferred to Morris’s squad, with an expanded focus on the police corruption.
In the late winter of 1988 agents working for Morris were putting together a plan to install a wiretap on Baharoian’s telephone. Morris’s unspoken worry was that Flemmi, and possibly Bulger, would be caught on the tape. It was a possibility that stoked his worst fear—an arrest of Bulger and Flemmi leading to his own apprehension if the mobsters, looking for leniency, turned and traded him in. He decided he’d have to warn them off.
Morris told Connolly about the imminent danger, that Flemmi and Bulger needed to stay off the telephone and stay away from Baharoian. They should call a meeting, replied Connolly. Connolly, recalled Morris, “thought they would like to hear from me. He wanted me to give them that information as opposed to him giving them that information, or meet with them at least to discuss it with them personally.”
Fine, said Morris. The four could meet. But there was one other worry haunting Morris. Even if these circumstances were not exactly the same, Morris knew that on a prior occasion when he’d disclosed a secret investigatory effort to the group, the outcome had been bad, chillingly bad. “I don’t want another Halloran,” Morris told Connolly.
Connolly made arrangements for another get-together, this time at the Lexington town house Morris had moved into. It seemed that on every front Morris’s life was bottoming out. His marriage was torn beyond repair, and he was worried sick about his teenage daughter. But as troubled as Morris was, Connolly just cruised along. Bulger and Flemmi seemed fine too. They had certainly come to expect this sort of input—tips about investigations, wiretaps, bugs, and the names of other wiseguys who were cooperating with the police. “As the need arose and I was in a certain situation,” said Flemmi, “I would ask him [Connolly] a question regarding certain people, and he would advise me.” It was as if the two agents were serving as their consiglieri, the Mafia’s term for advisers.
But Morris’s own reasons for protecting Bulger and Flemmi had multiplied. He was desperately looking to cover himself. “I was completely compromised at that point, and I was fearful that Mr. Flemmi might be intercepted, and that would be the beginning of the unraveling of what in fact had transpired between myself and them,” Morris said. He knew he was breaking the law—obstructing justice. “I believe that the Baharoian matter clearly was a violation of regulations.” But he saw his own neck on the chopping block if agents caught Flemmi or Bulger on tape. Connolly, Bulger, and Flemmi arrived at the town house, and Morris got right to it, telling the two informants “that we had already started a Title III on Baharoian, and I warned them to avoid Mr. Baharoian.”
Flemmi appreciated the heads-up. �
�Morris said that he could keep me out of the indictment, but he couldn’t do the same for other participants in that operation, meaning Baharoian and Puleo.”
The FBI’s wire on Baharoian was up from June 22 to September 26, 1988. That wiretap and other evidence resulted in the indictments of Baharoian, Puleo, and several Boston police officers. Baharoian eventually flipped and testified at trial against the police. Tapes were played, featuring the voices of bookies and cops. But not Flemmi’s. Not Bulger’s. They knew when it was safe to talk, and when to keep quiet.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Secrets Exposed
If Connolly was the Elmer Gantry of the Boston FBI office, an agent who used the power of his word to win converts, John Morris was another story. Unable to resist temptation but tortured by all the wrongdoing, Morris was like a kid at the wheel of a raceway video game who bumps his car against one wall and then overcompensates and veers at high speed back across the track, crashing into the opposite wall. Careening back and forth, unable to hold his place inbounds, he was approaching Game Over. By 1988 Morris’s marriage was ruined. He’d risked his FBI career. Even his friendship with the proselytizing Connolly was taking a turn for the worse. Morris, after saying he would support it, had opposed Connolly’s bid for promotion to supervisor. Connolly felt betrayed, with good reason. Morris had legitimate concerns about an agent who liked to come and go, could rarely sit still behind a desk, and handed in lackluster paperwork while serving as a manager for other agents.
More to the point, Morris’s opposition stemmed from matters he would not dare mention. In his letter to the FBI’s career board, Morris was not about to go into the corruption or explain that promoting Connolly would enhance the protection enjoyed by an increasingly dangerous Bulger. “I didn’t think he should be a supervisor, period,” was how Morris said he put it. “I didn’t think he was fit.”
The career board’s decision against a promotion naturally upset Connolly. But then Connolly went into action. He went to Jim Ahearn, who’d been in Boston as the office’s special agent in charge only a little over a year, since late 1986. Connolly and Ahearn had become fast friends. More than any supervisory agent who ran the Boston office, Ahearn was a boss Connolly could count on.
“They were,” observed Morris, “very, very close.” There were more than two hundred FBI agents assigned to the Boston office, and Morris watched the new manager do “things for Connolly that I have never seen done for an agent in my career.” One of those things was making sure Connolly got what Connolly wanted. “I have never seen a SAC go to FBI headquarters and recommend somebody be made a supervisor when the career board recommended against it. Never.” But Connolly got his wish, and during 1988 he was working as a drug task force supervisor. Jim Ahearn had come to the rescue.
Now, having crossed Connolly, Morris was more worried than ever about the agent’s influence, which was cresting at an all-time high. “I was concerned it would absolutely destroy me.” Morris felt he was falling out of the loop, becoming isolated. And fresh from leaking the Baharoian wiretap, he was also suffering a whiplash of guilt, careening back across the raceway.
Morris decided he would make a pledge to himself: “I wasn’t going to do anything more, you know, in terms of protecting them to protect myself.” Morris was going to put an end to it.
It was the late spring of 1988, and the timing of all the troubles haunting Morris coincided with the work by a team of Globe reporters about Bulger and the FBI. Lehr, Gerard O’Neill (the authors of this book), Christine Chinlund, and Kevin Cullen were all working on their series about the brothers Bulger. Cullen had put into play the notion that Whitey was an FBI informant as the only explanation for his charmed life.
The reporters kept asking around. Police veterans like Dennis Condon, the high-ranking state police official and former FBI agent, shrugged off the inquiry during an interview that summer. Having provided a lot of material about the history of the Boston Mafia and the Winter Hill gang, Condon sat back and sighed. “Well, I left the FBI in 1977, and I never expected any help from Whitey Bulger or Stevie Flemmi,” he said unblinkingly.
Jeremiah T. O’Sullivan, still the chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force, proved impatient and combative. “I don’t buy it,” he shot back when asked about the theory that Bulger served as an FBI informant. He then went on the offensive against the troopers and cops who had been talking to reporters. “There are a lot of people wandering around with blue lights and guns, making a nice salary. Many of those people aren’t making cases, and they cause feuds, bitching and moaning.”
Lehr may have bumped into Connolly on the street early in the year, and Cullen was talking to Connolly about other matters, but the team of reporters knew they could not expect help from him on this line of inquiry. Connolly was the FBI agent other cops were complaining about.
Instead, in May 1988, O’Neill called FBI supervisor John Morris. The two had gotten to know one another during the Globe’s series about the bugging of 98 Prince Street.
Morris took O’Neill’s call, but he rebuffed the gingerly advanced notion that Bulger was an FBI informant. Morris did agree to meet for lunch. O’Neill had described the project about the Bulger brothers and said he wanted to get from Morris some background, what reporters like to call “color,” about Whitey’s life in Boston’s underworld.
O’Neill and Morris met in June at Venezia’s, a restaurant overlooking Dorchester Bay. Morris arrived, dressed nattily in a suit, and he seemed excited to see O’Neill. There was some small talk, and then O’Neill raised the need to ask again about Bulger and the bureau. “You have no idea how dangerous he can be,” Morris said. It was as if Morris had come to the lunch ready for this moment. Bulger was an informant, Morris suddenly declared, and it was a deal that had become a terrible burden, one that he feared had corrupted the bureau and was going to end badly. The words poured off his lips, gathering momentum. Connolly and Bulger were close, perhaps too close. There were these dinners, Morris explained, he and Connolly had enjoyed at the home of the mother of Bulger’s partner. At one, Billy Bulger had even walked in on the feast Mrs. Flemmi had prepared. (This was a separate dinner from the one later attended by Jim Ring.) “There we were, the two brothers on one side of the table and the two FBI agents on the other.”
O’Neill sat there stunned. If there were any other sounds inside the restaurant—the noise of other diners and the waiters—neither man heard them. O’Neill had hoped for confirmation and got a confession. The FBI supervisor looked weary, ashen, and deflated; something inside him had given way. They wrapped up lunch, mixing chitchat and non sequiturs with references back to Bulger. Morris worried openly about what the Globe would do with the information and cautioned about the consequences of revealing an informant’s identity—the danger that such a disclosure could pose to Bulger, to himself, to Globe reporters.
O’Neill said he wasn’t sure yet what would come of it. But they both knew something had happened, something pivotal. This was the rare kind of information that precipitates movement in the way things are, information that causes a correction in the history of a city as it is understood by its citizens, so that ultimately one version of history is replaced by a more complete and truer one.
UNKNOWN to the reporters, Morris was already well informed about the Globe’s project even before O’Neill telephoned. Connolly had told Morris that Billy Bulger, the senate president, was cooperating and doing interviews focused on growing up in Southie. But Connolly had fresh concerns about an apparent turn in the journalists’ reporting: word had gotten back that the Globe was asking around about Whitey and the FBI. Connolly suggested that because Morris knew O’Neill better than any of the other FBI agents, he should put in a call and spin O’Neill off of any trouble spots. Connolly, recalled Morris, “requested that I contact him to attempt to learn about the true direction of the articles and to set him straight.”
The supervisor’s decision to verify the Globe’s reporting was hardly
high-minded. “My principal concern was my own skin,” he conceded. “I was trying to minimize damage in my career.” By his calculation, “outing” Bulger seemed to offer a new solution. Publicity might force the FBI’s hand and lead finally to closing down shop with the two informants. If that happened, his own wrongdoing—“that I had accepted money, gifts, and in turn had compromised an investigation”—might be buried forever. There was also a darker possibility—that the Mafia or someone else would assassinate an “outed” Bulger. This would truly end any risk to Morris that Bulger would ever disclose his own wrongdoing. But Morris insisted that bringing about this “potential harm” was not his intent. “I wanted them closed,” he said.
He also sensed, however, that he was just fooling himself to think that if only the FBI would close down Bulger then he would be safe. “My thinking there really wasn’t very clear,” he said. “I think that part of it, if Connolly were surfaced, that would mean that I would be surfaced; and I think at that point in time I in fact wanted my own involvement surfaced.” Full of fear and self-loathing, Morris lacked the courage to confess to the authorities.
