Where the Bodies Were Buried

by T. J. English

  Fitzpatrick remembered Morris back in the early 1980s showing him a book he was reading on the pathology of lying. To Bob, Morris was a classic example of the “superego lacuna,” the psychological term for someone who has holes in his or her conscience. “He conned Connolly, the bureau—everybody.”

  Then there was Jeremiah O’Sullivan, who used to distribute pamphlets to fellow prosecutors and agents about how to root out corruption.

  As Fitzpatrick sipped his drink and nursed his wounds, he was still having a hard time understanding how, in the eyes of those who took an oath and pledged allegiance to the concept of morality and justice, he was seen as the bad guy.

  In retrospect, the mugging of Fitzy had been inevitable. Fitzpatrick’s presence in the courtroom was a rebuke to generations of cops, agents, and prosecutors, from New England to Washington, D.C., who were part of the universe that helped create Whitey Bulger. After his direct testimony, Brian Kelly could have said, “No questions, Your Honor,” and it would not have affected the government’s case. Fitzpatrick’s testimony had little or nothing to do with the specific charges against Bulger. But Kelly, in his role as interrogator, was not there to serve the case. He was there to settle old scores, to assume the role of the Great Avenger on behalf of a system that still had much to hide.1

  THE DAY AFTER Bob Fitzpatrick left town, the issue of Pat Nee finally came to a head. Ironically, it was Nee himself who forced the issue.

  As a consultant and also one of the key on-camera performers in Saint Hoods, the Discovery Channel reality show, Nee and the rest of the cast had been invited by the producers to a promotional screening and after party in Los Angeles. They would all be flown out to the West Coast and put up in a nice hotel for what amounted to an all-expenses-paid, four-day vacation in Southern California.

  The date for the screening and party was set for August 2. But Nee was still under subpoena and required to stay in the area as long as the likelihood remained that he would be called to the stand. So Nee and his lawyer, Steve Boozang, decided to force Bulger’s hand. In a written motion filed with Judge Casper, Boozang requested that Bulger’s defense counsel be required to put up or shut up. Boozang stated that his client had an out-of-town commitment that had been scheduled for months, and that if Nee were, in fact, to be called to the stand, it should take place immediately so that his client could honor his commitment. He should not be held under subpoena indefinitely.

  Early on the morning of July 31, before the jury was present, Boozang and Nee arrived in courtroom number eleven at the Moakley Courthouse. Pat took a seat in the back. Though the spectators’ gallery was mostly full with media, family members of victims, law enforcement people, and others, Nee was struck by the fact that no one seemed to recognize him. Except for one person: Jackie Bulger, Whitey’s brother.

  Jackie had been a mainstay at the trial, the only member of the Bulger family to attend every day. The younger Bulger looked over, saw Nee, and quickly looked away. Whitey, on the other hand—seated at the defense table with his back to the spectators’ gallery—seemed unaware that Nee was even in the courtroom.

  Whitey’s former partner and current nemesis had no idea whether or not he was going to be called to the stand. He had been told by his lawyer that it was possible. To Nee, it hardly mattered. He had committed to memory his Fifth Amendment invocation, and if called to the stand he would take the Fifth.

  After Steve Boozang introduced himself to the judge and counsel from both sides as Nee’s lawyer, Judge Casper called them all over to a sidebar. The entire discussion about Nee’s fate took place beyond earshot of everyone in the courtroom, including Nee.

  Boozang started by saying, “Your Honor, Mr. Nee intends to assert his Fifth Amendment privilege on each and every question other than his name and where he lives. I think Mr. Bulger has ensnared him in some very serious allegations. I think that questions from Mr. Carney, whatever circus he intends to perform today—”

  Carney jumped in: “Your Honor, I object. I object. There’s—Mr. Boozang—I don’t think he is aware that he is prohibited from this kind of commentary instead of just providing legal argument. I know he doesn’t understand it. And—”

  Casper cut off Carney, saying to Boozang: “Counsel, obviously, just focus on the arguments.”

  “Certainly, Your Honor,” said the lawyer. He was hopped up and had come to the courtroom ready to rumble.

  Judge Casper sought to get to the heart of the matter. The burden was on Carney to provide some sort of explanation for why they should call Nee. “I’ve reviewed the case law on this,” she said. “Mr. Carney, can you make a proffer to me about what you’re planning to inquire about?”

  Carney explained that he was going to ask Nee about a video currently on the Internet, a promotional spot for the Discovery Channel reality show where Pat Nee talks about being a bookmaker in South Boston. “[Nee] has the confidence to not only put this in a video, but to publicize it. I suggest that this supports the fact, an argument we’ve made, that he is receiving special protection from the government.” Carney then offered that there was a second matter he planned to ask about. “I intend to ask him a question concerning whether or not he is a Top Echelon Informant. That is not a question to which he could assert a privilege, because if a person is a Top Echelon Informant, he isn’t committing a crime by answering that.”

  Said Casper, “And, Counsel, how are either of those areas relevant to the charges in this case against Mr. Bulger?”

  “Because it will present evidence to the jury of how they pick and choose who they want to have prosecuted. And they make deals, and sometimes those deals involve not even charging someone with a crime.”

  “May I respond, Judge?” asked Boozang.

  “Yes, you may.”

  “When most of us have grown up, we didn’t have reality TV shows. It’s a reality-based show. They had lawyers on the show to make sure nothing they did was improper. It’s a reality-based show; he’s earning a living. It has nothing to do with bookmaking. He was never a bookmaker.”

  In response, Carney continued to make his argument, though it was apparent that his main motivation was to get Nee into the courtroom, to put him on the stand before the jury, even though he knew that no matter what questions he asked, Nee would claim the Fifth. The only interesting point behind Carney’s argument was: why was he even making this argument?

  “I racked my brain over the weekend,” said Boozang to Judge Casper. “What could Mr. Carney possibly think up to ask Mr. Nee? Then I said, forget that, let’s get to the real source here. It’s Mr. Bulger.” Boozang speculated that the entire matter was a ploy by Bulger to drag Nee into the proceedings. “He’s doing the same thing he’s done before, except it’s Mr. Carney and Mr. Brennan who are his handlers, his FBI handlers, and he’s going to—”

  Casper raised a hand and cut the lawyer off before he could extend his metaphor, saying, “All right, Counsel, I get your argument. . . . I have heard the proffer from Mr. Carney about the areas of questions, that he’s planning to inquire about this YouTube show and Mr. Nee running some bookmaking crew in South Boston, and also inquire about whether he’s a Top Echelon Informant. . . . I don’t see how this is relevant to the case.”

  The judge’s ruling was clear, but still Carney pleaded. “I accept your honor’s ruling regarding whether or not it’s relevant that he has been a Top Echelon Informant against the Irish Republican Army on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  Boozang glared at Carney, dumbfounded. Where was this coming from? And why was Carney attempting to slip it into the record? There was only one answer: Bulger.

  Carney continued with his argument, until Judge Casper finally drove a stake into his proffer and declared, “I’m not going to allow any of that, Counsel. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Carney, finally conceding defeat.

  With the sidebar concluded, Boozang strolled to the back of the courtroom, nodding for Nee to follow as he exited through t
he swinging doors. Out in the hallway, he told his client, “That’s it. You can go. Have a good time in California.”

  Nee left the courthouse with a bounce in his step. There was a reporter and a photographer out on the sidewalk; they shouted a couple of questions at Nee. But he kept strolling purposefully toward a car that was waiting for him.

  Later that day, I spoke to Pat on the phone.

  “I had no idea what was going to happen,” he explained about his brief time in the courtroom. “I was ready to take the stand if I had to. I was ready to take the Fifth. But luckily that never happened.” There was a lightness in Nee’s voice, as if a weight had been lifted. He could hardly believe that he was now free and clear of the Bulger trial.

  We spoke a few more minutes before Nee said, “Hey, I gotta go. Busy packing for my flight. I’m off to Hollywood.”

  14

  OUT WITH A WHIMPER

  IN ITS LAST week of testimony, the Bulger trial sputtered toward the finish line. Since the defense counsel’s case had been gutted and their witness list decimated by Judge Casper, the defense of Whitey Bulger came down to a handful of former FBI agents, none of whom was a defender of the defendant. One by one, the retired agents were called to the stand, men mostly in their seventies far removed from their years in the Boston division of the FBI. They had been called by the defense to detail their personal experiences within a division of agents that, over time, began to feel more and more like an appendage of the city’s criminal underworld.

  On the outside, special agents and supervisors of this era looked like any other legitimate FBI agent. They showed up for work on time and wore the requisite suit and tie. You could not tell by looking at them that anything was amiss. When there were problems related to strange happenings in the office, honest agents turned to other agents and supervisors in the chain of command because they thought they could be trusted; that they would keep their entreaties confidential in accordance with bureau procedure; and that they would share the concern that crucial confidences and procedures were being violated and, as a result, investigations were being compromised and potential informants were being murdered. Honest agents turned to fellow agents and supervisors because they believed—they hoped—that their colleagues were loyal to the oath they had taken when they were sworn in as federal agents. But then the truth revealed itself.

  Retired agent Matthew Cronin was a ten-year veteran when he was assigned to the Boston division in 1978. He was assigned to a hijack and property theft unit known as the C-7 squad. Not long after he arrived, he had begun to get the impression that something was amiss. There were rumors of a leak in the office; someone was stealing confidential information from the rotor file and passing it along to criminals.

  It didn’t take long to trace the source of contention. The organized crime C-3 Unit was accorded privileges that other units were not. For one thing, they monopolized all of the division’s surveillance teams; when other units wanted to conduct surveillance they could not get a team, unless the supervisor of C-3, John Morris, cut one loose. C-3 did whatever they wanted, and no one could call them on it; they were protected from above.

  Testifying all these years later, white-haired and stoop-shouldered, Cronin seemed relieved to finally get a chance to describe what he called “an aura” in the Boston FBI. Along with Bob Fitzpatrick and a handful of others, he was an honest agent and good man who had been at first stunned and eventually defeated by what he encountered. In Cronin’s voice and demeanor there was also the sense that he had been haunted by how it played out, with Bulger and Flemmi killing people while being protected from within his own division.

  From the witness stand, Cronin described one investigation that he remembered well. He and his partner, James Crawford, were on to the Laffey brothers, a crew of criminals out of Chelsea. The Laffey brothers were connected with all the major players in South Boston. The C-7 Unit was working on this investigation with the Strike Force led by Jeremiah O’Sullivan.

  Cronin and Crawford became concerned that their investigation was being undermined by an internal leak. They approached a Strike Force lawyer, Dave Twomey, to lodge a complaint. Twomey told them he would look into it. Years later, Cronin and Crawford learned that Twomey himself was the leak.

  On this same investigation, the agents finally reached a point where they drafted an affidavit that was to be submitted to a judge to secure authorizations for wiretaps and search warrants. The day they planned to submit the affidavit, which included the names of seventeen criminals targeted by the investigation, Cronin and Crawford were approached by Morris, Connolly, and James Ring, who had recently taken over as the new supervisor of the C-3 Unit. The men from C-3 told them there were three names they wanted removed from the affidavit. Two of the names were Bulger and Flemmi.

  Morris and Connolly told Cronin that they were conducting a case on the three names and were concerned that having them named would alert them. That, as it turned out, was a lie.

  Cronin’s voice, all these years later, still strained with incredulity as he said, “Those three were confidential informants. We should have been told that, but we weren’t.” Cronin added that never in his career had he been instructed to remove names from a sworn affidavit.

  Cronin and Crawford wanted to complain, but where could they turn? Eventually, they did turn to their Justice Department supervisor, Jerry O’Sullivan. Of that meeting, Cronin testified, “Initially, I was very pleasant but I turned angry. . . . Mr. O’Sullivan ordered us out of his office.” Cronin and Crawford were experiencing the same creeping sense of dread that Fitzpatrick had felt, the knowledge that those you hoped you could trust were, in fact, members of the conspiracy.

  When asked why he didn’t contact FBI headquarters with his concerns, Cronin said, “You learn pretty quickly to keep your cards close to your vest.” To lodge a complaint with headquarters would have required going through the chain of command; Cronin was worried that there would be “consequences.”

  THE DEFENSE HAD hoped to explore the outer reaches of the conspiracy to protect Bulger but were thwarted at every turn. On their original witness list had been names such as ex-governor William Weld and FBI director Robert Mueller, who served as U.S. attorney in Boston after Jeremiah O’Sullivan. These names never made it past the first cut. If the defense was to be prohibited from following tributaries of corruption to the top, they could at least wallow in the lower depths. Since the prosecution was contending that the corruption began and ended with the Boston FBI, there were few objections from Wyshak or Kelly. The retired agents were paraded to the stand, like survivors from the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  Among them was Cronin’s supervisor in the C-7 squad, Fred Davis Jr., who ambled into the courtroom, was sworn in, and took his seat in front of the microphone.

  Lanky and laconic at age seventy-four, Davis was a cowboy from Missouri who had served most of his career in Houston, where he likely fit in, before being transferred in September 1979 to Boston, where he likely did not. It wasn’t that Davis wasn’t a likable fellow; he was. But the ways of the northeastern big city were a hornet’s nest unlike anything Davis had ever experienced in the West.

  After being asked to give the standard recitation of his various postings and duties within the FBI food chain, the witness was asked, “Did you notice something about the atmosphere in Boston . . . that was different than your previous positions?”

  “Yeah,” said Davis. “I call it paranoia. . . . The working agents were a little more nervous than they might have been in some other situations in another office. . . . They were nervous about an internal situation. . . . They were concerned that there were agents in the office who might be leaking information.”

  Davis described a time when he had been in the office for only three months, when an agent whom he did not know seemed to be sniffing around his unit’s rotor file. Normally, when an agent from another unit wanted to see the files of a different squad, he went first to that squad’s supervisor an
d asked permission. Davis asked the agents on his squad, “Who is that fella?” He was told, “John Connolly from the C-3 squad.”

  The agents did not like Connolly snooping around their files; they warned Davis that he “was up to no good.” Said Davis, “Everyone in the office seemed to know that Connolly was the leak.”

  Hank Brennan asked Davis what, if anything, he did about it.

  “Well,” said Davis, “I went to John Morris, whom I personally liked the fellow. . . . I said, ‘Look, my guys are nervous about Connolly being in our area. I want you to do whatever you need to do to keep him out of there. Otherwise I’ll run him out, and then I’ll take it up front.’ Meaning the SAC.”

  “Based on your limited experience at that point with Mr. Morris, did you trust him and his integrity at that point?”

  “I had no reason not to.”

  Morris said he would take care of it, but the pilferage of files did not cease. Eventually, Davis began gathering up certain sensitive files and, at the end of each day, locking them in a fireproof safe inside his private office.

  “Did you find that to be consistent with or normal compared to your experiences in other offices?”

  “No.”

  “As an FBI agent who is sworn to truth and integrity, did you have an expectation that you would be able to trust all your colleagues in your office without putting case files under lock and key?”

  “Yes.”

  One case that Davis’s squad was especially concerned about involved Frank Lepere, a major marijuana dealer who had become a tremendous source of revenue for the Bulger organization. The C-7 squad was investigating Lepere for the theft of trucks and other transportation equipment that he used in his narcotics business.