Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger Page #4

from prosecution.

In addition to hearing Morris

on the stand today,

federal prosecutors plan to discuss

James Bulger's alleged

700 page FBI informant file.

Man 3:
To understand the Bulger story,

you really have to understand

how the FBI and top echelon

informant program came into being

to destroy the Italian Mafia.

It really begins before the program

even existed when Joe Velachi testified

before a Congressional committee

in 1963.

And this testimony was engineered

by Robert Kennedy,

Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy,

and it was really explosive.

Velachi came forward

and he described

the hierarchy of the five families

in New York,

and he described

the initiation ceremony.

Man:
What is the name

of this organization?

"Cosa nostra," in Italian.

Man:
"Cosa nostra" in Italian.

"Our thing"...and "our family,"

in English.

English:
The first time one of these

Mafia guys was talking

into a television camera,

and it was a big deal,

and it stole Hoover's thunder.

Because Hoover had,

for decades now, been denying

that there was a Mafia.

Now Hoover had a problem.

He needed to make up for lost time.

And he needed to go out

and get informants

as dramatic and as explosive

as Joe Velachi.

We should all be concerned

with one goal:

the eradication of crime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation

is as close to you

as your nearest telephone.

It seeks to be your protector in

all matters within its jurisdiction.

It belongs to you.

English:
The top echelon informant

program also was what gave power

to guys like John Connolly.

Because how are you going to

get guys like Velachi?

Well, you're going to need FBI guys

who walk the walk

and talk the talk,

who can go out into that underworld

and sort of make deals

with these guys.

So the power and influence

of the swaggering agent

within the hierarchy went way up.

Man:
The general topic of our

discussion today is informant handling.

And with me today is John Connolly,

a 15-year veteran of the FBI.

How do you go about developing

individuals for recruitment,

or targeting as an informant

for the Bureau?

In the case of

organized crime type people,

you probably wouldn't want

to target a boss, for instance.

You'd want someone perhaps close

to the level of criminal activity,

but not necessarily involved.

Lehr:
When John Connolly was a boy,

he lived in Southie,

in the same housing project with the

Bulgers. And he was in awe of Whitey,

who was a teenage thug

with the platinum striking hair,

and the amazing Hollywood good looks.

So John Connolly, given his history

as a son of Southie,

his connection to the Bulger family,

he succeeded in forging

what has since been called

an unholy alliance

with Whitey Bulger.

Remember, these are our most

important assets that we have,

informants.

I mean, they're the name of the game.

You're going to get friendly with them,

and you're going to like them.

But you never can forget

who you work for.

(phone ringing)

Carney:
Hello.

Woman:
Hi, Mr. Bulger's on the phone.

Carney:
All right,

please put him through.

Woman:
Sure.

Thanks for calling. There

were a couple of things I wanted

- To ask you about.

- Bulger:
Sure.

The first is, that you've told me

since the very first day I met you,

that you've never been an informant.

Bulger:
That's correct.

Carney:
Does that mean you've never

been an informant in your entire life?

Bulger:
Never. As a teenager, I took

many a beating at the police stations,

and I never cracked.

As a bank robber, I was captured,

I pled guilty to free the girlfriend

that I was with,

and I got a 20 year prison sentence,

first offender.

In prison, I was part of

an escape plot. The plot fell apart,

one of the guys gave my name.

I told them, I don't know

what you're talking about. I spent months

in the hole, naked and the whole thing.

I went through a lot there.

And after four months,

for punishment they sent me

to Alcatraz. And that was it.

I never, never, never cracked.

And the Boston FBl, no way.

I met John Connolly, who's a

salty guy, Irish Catholic like myself.

You know, friendship, "If I ever

hear anything, I'll tip you off,

I'll give you a heads up."

And then I told him, "All right, John."

I says, "I'll see you. If you can

let me know, I'd appreciate it."

And that's how it got started.

Carney:
This isn't really

a typical criminal trial.

James Bulger knows

that by following the strategy

he has directed us to do,

he will be found guilty,

and he's gonna die

behind the walls of a prison.

But for Jim it doesn't matter,

he's at the end of his life.

He doesn't know if he'll live

till the end of the trial,

never mind till

the end of the year.

But for him it's like, it's his last

opportunity to tell people

that he was never an informant,

that our federal government

is more corrupt in law enforcement

than anyone ever imagined,

even to this day in this trial,

it's corrupt,

and he wants people to know it.

There's a lot of things

that we need to dispel.

The fact that Jim wasn't an informant.

I mean, the local thinking

is that absolutely he was an informant.

Everybody talks about it,

books are written about it.

Until you actually

go through everything

and look at it to make your own

independent assessment,

you can't have an opinion.

So getting involved in this case,

I had an opportunity that I don't

think anybody in the public does,

is I get to see the files

that the government had

to suggest that he was an informant.

I thought that there were some things

about the file

that were so suspicious,

that I wanted to look into it in depth.

And so I sat down with Daryl,

and I asked her to come up with

an independent assessment,

whether or not she thought there

was any legitimacy to the files.

Of course I was eager to start

the project and see what I could find,

but I was also a bit skeptical.

I mean, just looking at the file

when it was handed to me,

I thought, how could that

possibly be fictitious?

It's 700 pages and it looks

very official, so it seems like

it had to be solid.

But slowly, I found a lot of

strange repetition in the file.

What I've done is created tabs

on every page where I found

alternate sources for the information.

And we learned that John Connolly

was pilfering through files.

And Connolly took specific information

from these sources,

and placed it into Mr. Bulger's file.

These alternate sources

comes from wiretaps,

it comes from phone calls,

news articles, public information,

FBI memorandums.

And the majority of the information

comes from other informant files.

A top echelon file

is supposed to be filled

with singular, unique information

that can lead to a prosecution.

And just based on the patterns

that I found looking at

other alternate sources,

it's just not consistent with someone

who was providing unique information.

Like this first page of his file,

from May 29, 1981.

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