Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down (15 page)

So all the precautions I had taken to keep the information safe from the foxes guarding the henhouse turned out to be for naught and quite threatening. Without Roy McKinnon and Tom Kelly to back me up in Washington, Whitey Bulger’s crucial status as an informant rendered him untouchable as the subject of a criminal investigation, lest the house of cards O’Sullivan and others had built got blown down. I started to wonder if my transfer to Boston, and its stated purpose, weren’t so I would get Bulger, but to provide the illusion that the effort had been made. Provide cover, in other words, for those at HQ who were afraid of the blowback when and if things turned. It was the ultimate setup and seemed too paranoid and over-the-top to believe at the time.

In the end, though, it turned out to be true.

My first suspicion that things, incredibly, were turning in this direction came when former agent Paul Rico’s name surfaced in a major way in our investigation. His being hired originally, and then retained by the doomed Roger Wheeler, at Miami Jai Alai had little to do with his solid credentials and résumé, and
everything
to do with Whitey wanting his guy inside the massive cash-generating operation. Rico was Flemmi’s and Bulger’s original handler in the sixties and seventies, and all the information we were getting indicated he had a pipeline to at least some of the agents involved in my investigation, though not necessarily part of my squad.

In my mind, it boiled down to a simple issue: Richie Castucci wasn’t the first FBI informant to be killed by Whitey and he wouldn’t be the last. Unless something was done and fast, Brian Halloran and John Callahan were going to become Bulger’s next victims.

16

BOSTON, 1982

I thought it was imperative to get both Brian Halloran and John Callahan into the Witness Protection Program. Once they felt safe from Bulger’s long, murderous reach, I felt confident they’d sing like canaries.

It should have been fairly straightforward, but it wasn’t. HQ management trusted Morris and Connolly, and the Boston Strike Force under O’Sullivan needed their prize informants to remain credible. Otherwise O’Sullivan feared the weight of the entire case he was building against the Angiulo family would collapse in the resulting scandal. This was shaping up to be the biggest case in Boston organized crime history. But here’s the kicker: If O’Sullivan was aware of Bulger’s informant status, which he unquestionably was, it would be a grievous breach of security. This gangster, as head of a mob enterprise every bit as bad as Angiulo’s, defined the very kind of target the FBI and any prosecutor would have wanted a chance at in federal court.

But O’Sullivan wasn’t just any prosecutor. He’d already gone to bat for Bulger and Flemmi in the Race Fix case, letting them off prosecution on the advice of Connolly and Morris and promises of future intelligence Whitey would provide. And now he and the Organized Crime people at HQ were convinced, obsessed even, that Bulger was the only one who could give them Angiulo even though he’d given them nothing of value in all his years as an informant. It was all smoke and mirrors, a tragic con that HQ bought into in their obsession to bring down the Boston mob even if it meant letting a murderer go on killing. Just as Rico and Condon had let Joseph “the Animal” Barboza kill with impunity, framing innocent men for a murder he committed, it appeared that Connolly, Morris, and O’Sullivan were willing to do the same for Whitey Bulger.

My job, though, was to take Bulger down and now I finally had the means to do just that in the form of Halloran. Protecting Brian Halloran was going to be a major problem, though. He was bull-headed and glued himself to Callahan around the Irish bars of Boston. Yet the information he was giving us was priceless. He admitted, for example, that his buddy Callahan had been the one to propose the Wheeler murder to Whitey. He furnished info that Martorano wore a golf cap, sunglasses, and a fake beard in Oklahoma when he shot Wheeler between the eyes at Southern Hills Country Club—information that had never been revealed to the public. I needed to keep Halloran safe long enough to help me turn Callahan for corroboration and to testify before a grand jury, so I followed the proper channels in reaching out to O’Sullivan to get him into Witness Protection.

“I’ll review the file,” O’Sullivan said, so eager for me to leave his office he hadn’t even shut the door or offered me a chair.

“We need to move fast.”

“You have any idea how many requests like this I get?” he challenged.

“It’s the first one you’ve gotten from me. This guy’s giving us Martorano as the shooter on Bulger’s direct instructions. Claims Martorano used Callahan’s condo in Florida to hide out.”

“You believe him?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

“I’ll review the file,” O’Sullivan repeated, reaching for his phone as a clear sign it was time for me to take my leave. “But I’m telling you right now Halloran’s a known drunk and I don’t trust drunks.”

His body language, lack of surprise, and interest at what I was telling him left me no choice. Halloran’s info was so sensitive that I walled it off from much of the Boston FBI office. This was the first time in my career that I actually couldn’t trust the agents in my own office. I removed Halloran’s informant files and cases from the squad bay and placed them in my office safe. I had become a “mole,” funneling extremely sensitive information to HQ only to have supervisors in Washington funnel it back on the “Q.T.” to Morris and Connolly. So, in ironic and ultimately tragic counterpoint, the prime beneficiary of my info was none other than Whitey Bulger.

I have never seen a major case handled with so much ineptitude. My reporting to O’Sullivan on the Wheeler murder for prosecutive action should have led him to set up a coordinated effort with Oklahoma prosecutors, while procedure dictated FBIHQ similarly coordinate the investigations of different FBI offices toward prosecution. O’Sullivan took no steps in this regard at all and ultimately decided against putting Brian Halloran in the Witness Protection Program, claiming I hadn’t made a strong enough case.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office had jurisdiction in such matters, so, livid, I went over O’Sullivan’s head to Bill Weld, the U.S. attorney at the time and eventual governor of Massachusetts. I told Weld flat out that Halloran would be killed if we did not protect him. The Strike Force controlled the purse strings, so to speak, and we needed money to safeguard Halloran appropriately. Weld said he would look into it. The problem was O’Sullivan was saying and doing just enough to appear as if he wanted to prosecute Bulger and Flemmi, but claimed the evidence hadn’t developed against them. He didn’t think Halloran’s claims held any validity and he argued that point to Weld.

“Fitzy said to me, ‘You know people always say there’s a danger for this snitch or that snitch,’” Weld conceded in court years later in his testimony during the Wolf hearings. “‘They may be killed for cooperating. I’m telling you this guy [Halloran]—I would not want to be standing next to this guy.’”

Ultimately, Weld opted against overruling O’Sullivan’s decision.

O’Sullivan, most likely at Morris and Connolly’s request, was stalling—just long enough for Whitey to get to Halloran before I got what I needed from him: enough to get Callahan to squeal on his pals, too. Based on Halloran’s assertions that John Connolly spoke to Bulger “all the time,” I turned the focus of my investigation toward him. Proving that he was giving information to Bulger would allow me to kill two birds with one stone: nail Bulger and begin the process of rooting a myriad of corruption out of the Boston office. Because of a similar experience during my time in Miami, I had no compunction about investigating Connolly, a fellow agent, as the pipeline to the Irish wiseguys.

I recalled that shortly after my ABSCAM case wrapped up, Tom Kelly had reminded me about the story in Miami wherein Title III tapes were found that should’ve been in the Miami evidence room. These tapes were found in one of the supervisor’s desk drawers, and when listened to proved to be explosive, since they indicated that the Miami police homicide detectives were being used as hit men against drug couriers in the Miami area.

Tom asked me to review the tapes and I did, becoming both alarmed and upset by the fact that drug cartels had infiltrated the Miami Police Department, and more critically the FBI. What was not known was that the drug cartel traffickers had infiltrated law enforcement in such a way that cops were not only killing people but were also selling drugs.

I learned through sources that one of the agents on my squad in Miami had an association with the cartel through a drug lord named Rodriguez. The source advised me that the agent had a six-figure balance at the local bank, the same bank where the drug lord kept most of his drug money.

When I started to nose around, the agent grew scared and confronted me.

“What the fuck you think you’re doing? I’m clean. You think I’m on the take, you piece of shit?”

“If you’re not, the investigation will prove it.”

“I got the best fucking informants down here. You know what that means? It means you’re shit in this office.”

“Get back to your desk. Get back to work.”

“I don’t have to listen to you.”

“Yeah, you do. Now get outta my office and back to what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

I got up in his face, hoping he’d take a swing at me, feeling like I was back in the boxing ring. “You wanna take your best shot, go ahead. Otherwise, get back to work.”

The agent shrank back and stormed out of my office, rushing upstairs to tell his side of things to the Special Agent in Charge of the office.

I called Tom Kelly to alert him. I briefed him and succinctly related the information I had with regard to the Miami agent having possible involvement with the drug lord. Unbeknownst to Tom and me, the agent told a different story, whereupon the SAC sought our input in this matter. I briefed the SAC about the information I had and about the sensitivity involved, including the agent’s possible association with the drug lord. The SAC simply told the ASAC to handle it and that if I had any problems I should return to him immediately. But I had a penchant for handling things on my own, man-to-man, face-to-face.

In retrospect, I should have heeded the advice of a seasoned agent about the consequences of high-profile cases and taking down powerful people.

“Watch out, Fitz,” he warned me, “they will never let you forget this!”

Back in Boston, as if to make that agent a prophet, HQ personnel involved in the day-to-day handling interceded and in effect left Connolly to work Bulger, meaning it was business as usual even though a preponderance of evidence indicated it should be anything but. I was already following up an astounding number of leak cases when Agent Jim Knotts reported Connolly again for “robbing” sensitive informant information from his case files. I reported the matter in a memo to SAC Sarhatt who filed it without taking any action.

HQ listened to me, in effect, to keep me quiet, while Sarhatt and O’Sullivan didn’t listen to me at all. It didn’t matter what I said or what evidentiary material I produced. The minds of all seemed already made up, and no one was about to spoil a potential takedown of the mafia.

Ultimately it was Brian Halloran who paid the heaviest price for this. His days might have been numbered, and the nights he spent in various safe houses might have been sleepless ones, but Brian Halloran had a lot to live for. His wife had just checked into Deaconess Hospital in Boston to give birth to the couple’s second child. Just before dusk on May 11, 1982 Halloran was sitting in a Datsun with a friend, construction worker Michael Donahue, outside the Topside Lounge in Southie when a blue Chevy pulled alongside. Inside the car he spotted Whitey Bulger and another man wearing a mask.

According to testimony given years later by Bulger lieutenant Kevin Weeks, who claims he was serving as “lookout” at the time, Halloran got a look at Whitey and lurched from the car. He tried to flee as gunfire rang out, spraying the car and killing Donahue instantly. Halloran managed to get part way across the street before falling to a hail of bullets fired from a silenced Mac-10 submachine gun and Bulger’s own .30 caliber carbine. A third shooter lunged from the backseat and rushed toward Halloran, firing several shots from a pistol into him from point blank range.

Seconds later, the Chevy screeched away from the scene as sirens wailed in the distance. When police arrived on the scene, they found Halloran’s friend Michael Donahue dead (guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time) and Halloran himself soon to be.

A Winter Hill Gang operative named Jimmy Flynn, also an FBI informant for John Connolly, was wrongly arrested for the murders. Whitey had framed him with the help of his police and Bureau sycophants. Flynn was finally tried and acquitted in 1986 and went on to appear in bit parts in films, including
Good Will Hunting.

O’Sullivan’s refusal to place Brian Halloran in Witness Protection, or even recognize him as an informant, had left my squad unable to offer Halloran the protection he desperately needed. He had been more willing to talk than ever, but the only thing we could promise him in return were bullets over Boston.

Actually, it turned out to be twelve.

John Connolly quickly went into cover-his-ass mode by filing a report claiming that Charlestown gangsters Halloran had long been at odds with, including Flynn, were responsible for his execution. I knew full well that Halloran was killed because Connolly had told Bulger he was talking, making him a direct accessory to murder, as the Wolf hearings revealed sixteen years later. But what about Jeremiah O’Sullivan, the Strike Force head, and Bill Weld, the then U.S. attorney? Hadn’t they also failed to act on my recommendation to do everything possible to protect Brian Halloran?

They could try and mount a zero-sum game argument, Brian Halloran becoming a necessary sacrifice to assure the takedown of the Providence and Boston La Cosa Nostra families under Raymond Patriarca and Jerry Angiulo. I can’t understand myself, much less explain, how the vision of so many became so warped and narrowed that they couldn’t see the truth that was right before their eyes. In that respect, those far above John Connolly used him to do their dirty work, knowing full well what would happen if they didn’t move to close Bulger as I repeatedly recommended. They had basically chosen Whitey, who was giving them nothing, over the preponderance of evidence I was giving them.