Where the Bodies Were Buried (50 page)

Fitzpatrick remembered how every time someone from the bureau was taken by Morris and Connolly to meet Bulger, they were told, “Don't treat him like an informant. He's sensitive about that.” Apparently, Bulger's handlers had finessed the relationship in such a way that for them to receive information from Bulger and Flemmi, they allowed Bulger to believe whatever he wanted to believe. Meanwhile, they hyped up his informant file with information sometimes pilfered from other files. Said Fitzpatrick, “Anything of value that could be used against LCN, that came from Flemmi. Thanks to Connolly, Bulger got equal credit for anything that came from Flemmi. That also went into Bulger's file.”

I asked Fitzpatrick about a particular FBI summit meeting that I knew would come up. An earlier witness, Special Agent Gerald Montanari, had testified about a meeting that he attended, along with Fitzpatrick, in Washington, D.C., at FBI headquarters. The meeting had taken place in the wake of the Wheeler, Callahan, and Halloran murders, all of which stemmed from the alleged involvement of the Winter Hill Mob in the World Jai Lai operations. At the time of this meeting, the FBI field office in Oklahoma was investigating the Wheeler murder and had made accusations that they were not receiving full cooperation in Boston.

The D.C. meeting was attended by Boston supervisors, supervisors from FBI headquarters, and other representatives of the Justice Department. It was the most high-level meeting to ever take place on the issue of Bulger and Flemmi. At this meeting, everyone had a chance to speak his mind. If there was to be a point of recognition or understanding on the part of DOJ that the Bulger-Flemmi relationship was out of hand or had gone bad, now
was the time to take action. Instead, the primary concern of those gathered at this meeting was to protect their informants and see to it that the Bulger-Flemmi connection was kept confidential.

I asked Fitzpatrick, “In retrospect, do you wish you had spoken up at that meeting?”

I could see the cloud come over Bob. I knew this was a sore subject. Even though Fitzpatrick's book,
Betrayal,
portrayed him as a crusader and quasi-whistle-blower, I knew that in many ways Bob was haunted by the belief that he could have done more. His efforts to close Bulger as an informant had been met with such vehement resistance that, in some ways, he eventually became defeated and stopped trying. The meeting in Washington, for Fitzpatrick, had been the ultimate missed opportunity.

“I think by then, I had lost my faith in God,” he told me.

The loss of faith was no small thing. Fitzpatrick had grown up in a Catholic orphanage in New York City. Early in his young adulthood, he entered a pre-seminary with the thought of becoming a priest. He left to join the military and later the FBI, but issues of devotion and faith remained paramount in his life and career.

I let the subject drop. Bob's daughter was also in town and had joined us at Champion's; the gathering had turned into a family get-together for the Fitzpatricks rather than a pre-testimony strategy session. Bob was concerned about whether or not he was prepared for what he anticipated might be a vigorous cross-examination by the government. He'd had a couple of conversations with Carney and Brennan to discuss his testimony, but not as much preparation as he would have liked. “I'm not sure that I'm fully ready for this,” he said. But family matters had taken precedence; he would take the stand the following morning whether he was ready or not.

I left Fitzpatrick that evening with the hope that everything would be okay, though, in truth, neither Fitzpatrick nor I had any idea what he was likely to encounter in his time on the stand.

ON MONDAY, THE
trial resumed with a renewed air of expectation. Partly, this was due to the fact that it was the first day of the defense case, time for a new angle on the evidence and fresh issues to be raised.

There were unresolved matters: For one, would Pat Nee be called to the stand? The defense was still claiming that they intended to call Nee, but the prosecution countered that for Nee to take the stand and be made to take the Fifth in front of the jury would be improper. The judge had been kicking this issue down the road but made it clear that it would need to be resolved shortly.

Another issue: would Bulger testify? On numerous occasions, Carney had been asked about this. If Bulger were to take the stand it would require scheduling issues. There would need to be a hearing to discuss what issues Bulger would be allowed to testify about. It would likely extend the trial another week or more. Not to mention that it would create a media frenzy that might require special security measures at the courthouse.

“My client has not yet made up his mind,” is all that Carney would say. If Bulger did testify, added Carney, he would be brought to the stand as their closing witness.

Meanwhile, Robert Fitzpatrick was brought into the courtroom and led to the witness stand.

“Good morning, sir,” said the judge.

“Good morning, Your Honor,” said the witness.

Hank Brennan, standing at the podium, asked, “Over the course of your life, sir, did you work in a particular area?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Could you tell the jury where?”

“In the FBI for twenty-one-plus years.”

Brennan led Fitzpatrick through his resume, which involved many significant cases, including, as a young agent, being at the scene of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination; working undercover to infiltrate white supremacist organizations in Mississippi; and the ABSCAM political corruption investigation of the 1980s that led to the conviction of a sitting U.S. senator.

Fitzpatrick likes to talk; he's an Irish storyteller whose stories lead from one story into another. Brennan seemed content to let the witness ramble, which brought vigorous objections from prosecutor Brian Kelly on the grounds of “unnecessary narrative,” “hearsay,” and “lack of relevance.”

Through it all, Fitzpatrick painted a picture of an FBI conspiracy to
protect Bulger that boggled the mind. His efforts to close Whitey as an informant touched off a chain reaction within the Justice Department that only deepened and broadened, the more pressure he applied. The clearest indication of what Fitzpatrick was up against was when he attempted to get informant Brian Halloran into the witness protection program.

The South Boston hoodlum was being handled by the team of Special Agents Montanari and Brunnick. At the time, the investigation into the murder of Roger Wheeler in Tulsa was gaining steam. Halloran was claiming to have been originally given the task of killing the owner of World Jai Lai that was eventually carried out by John Martorano.

As ASAC, Fitzpatrick played a role in the management of Halloran as a potential informant against Bulger and Flemmi. “It was creating problems,” explained the witness. “I told headquarters the we were in a double-bind situation. . . . I continually voiced my opinion that you can't have Bulger as an informant given the situation that I discovered in my initial meeting [with Bulger]. You have a guy telling you he's not an informant, that he's never going to testify. . . . That automatically in my opinion and according to the book would nullify him as a trusted informant. He may be an informant in name. You can call him whatever you want, but if the subject doesn't believe that, as far as he's concerned, that he's an informant—it's a rather unique and complicated way of expressing that a lot of informants don't want to be labeled as informants, and they say they're not. In some cases, they're not; in other cases, they say that for ego gratification, for power, and for a host of other reasons they don't want to be called an informant.”

With Halloran as an informant and potential witness against Bulger, Fitzpatrick had a more immediate reason for not wanting Bulger's informant status to stand. “We couldn't have Bulger giving us information on murder cases because he had now become the subject of a murder investigation.”

“Did you make that clear to Washington?” asked Brennan.

Fitzpatrick pointed out that in his memo to headquarters he not only made it clear, it was in the title of his report.

“And when Washington wouldn't do anything to close [Bulger's file], what did you do?”

“Well,” said Fitzpatrick, “in a quasi-military organization, there's a fine
line between insubordination, telling my superiors what to do, and making recommendations. I could express the fact that I didn't like things, but I can't come right out and say, ‘Close this guy.' I can be very vocal, and I was. I could be adamant about my position, and I was. I explained to them that we have a problem here.”

“Did Washington follow your advice?'

“No.”

The FBI agents handling Brian Halloran felt they needed to get him off the street—pronto. “We thought he was going to get whacked, murdered,” said Fitzpatrick.

As ASAC, it fell on Fitzy to contact Justice Department New England Strike Force chief Jeremiah O'Sullivan, from whom he needed authorization to initiate Halloran into WITSEC, the Witness Security Program.

“So when you went over to see Mr. O'Sullivan,” asked Brennan, “what happened during that conversation?”

Fitzpatrick opened his mouth to speak.

“Objection!” shouted Brian Kelly.

“Sustained, sustained, sustained,” said the judge, drowning out the witness, who had started to give an answer.

Brennan said to Fitzpatrick, “Without saying what the conversation was, did you have a conversation with Mr. O'Sullivan?”

“I did.”

“Did he agree to put [Halloran] in the witness protection program?”

Again, Kelly was on his feet. “Objection. Leading.”

“Sustained as to that question,” said Casper. She turned to Brennan: “Do you want to ask him what did you do as a result of that conversation?”

Said Brennan to Fitzpatrick, “As a result of your conversation with Mr. O'Sullivan, was Halloran placed in the witness protection program?”

“No, he was not.”

“During that conversation with Mr. O'Sullivan, without saying what was said, what was your temperament?”

“Anger.”

“What was Mr. O'Sullivan's temperament?”

Kelly stood to object, but Fitzy got his answer in before the objection: “He was adamant against.”

“Objection!” shouted Kelly. In making so many objections, the prosecution was following legal protocol, but they were also protecting the reputation of the Boston U.S. attorney's office—their office—formerly led by Jeremiah O'Sullivan.

As Fitzpatrick recalled it, after getting no satisfaction from O'Sullivan, he sought to go over his head to William Weld, the U.S. attorney who would later become governor.

Asked Brennan, “When you went to see William Weld, was your objective the same as when you went to see Mr. O'Sullivan?”

“My objective was to complain that we're not doing enough to put Halloran in the witness protection program and get him out of harm's way.”

“When you spoke to William Weld about your complaints, was Brian Halloran put into the witness protection program?”

“No.”

“How many days after you spoke to William Weld was it that Mr. Halloran and Mr. Donahue were murdered?”

“Two days.”

With their key witness now dead, the FBI's investigation of the murder of Roger Wheeler had been dealt a potentially insurmountable blow. In the wake of this fiasco, Fitzpatrick, on May 25, 1982, was called to the big conference in Washington, D.C., attended by Special Agent Montanari, as well as Jeff Jamar, unit chief for the Boston organized crime division; Randy Prillaman, the FBI's national informant coordinator; and Sean McWeeney, chief of the bureau's Organized Crime Section. At this summit meeting, which took place at FBI headquarters, inside the building of the U.S. Department of Justice, Fitzpatrick assumed there would be a discussion about the Wheeler and Halloran murders. Instead, the primary concern, as expressed by Chief McWeeney, was the New England Strike Force's budding case against Jerry Angiulo and the Mafia.

Fitzpatrick was stunned. In his view, FBI headquarters should have been concerned that people were being murdered by gangsters whom they were operating as informants. Instead, their main concern seemed to be, How do we protect our informants from exposure?

The result of this meeting represented a watershed moment in the conspiracy to cover up the Bulger fiasco. In a memo written by ASAC
Fitzpatrick, summarizing this meeting and a series that followed, it was stated: “It was mutually agreed that agents actively working the Wheeler case would coordinate information with SA Connolly's sources so that this matter can be quickly and effectively resolved.”

In other words, headquarters was kicking the ball to John Connolly, a street agent, designating him to coordinate with Bulger and Flemmi, meaning they were setting up Connolly as a fall guy in the event of future exposure.

In court, after reading from the memo, Brennan asked Fitzpatrick whether he agreed with what was being suggested by headquarters.

“Well,” said Fitzpatrick, “again, that was one of the problems, the double bind. Here we are being instructed to deal with Connolly, where his source, Bulger, is a subject in the murder that we're going to go talk to the informant agent about. It didn't make much sense. And, quite frankly, we discussed that. We discussed that it was like leading the fox into the chicken coop.”

“Did you discuss that in Boston or did you discuss that in Washington?”

“Both.”

Fitzpatrick's direct testimony lasted two hours. His time on the stand ended with the agent detailing how his attempts to close Bulger as an informant ended with his being forced to take a demotion and cut in pay and the loss of his pension. It was a sorry statement on the nature of institutional retribution and designed to elicit sympathy for a man who had gone against the grain and paid a heavy price. Fitzpatrick's story was a cautionary tale, one that—the jury was encouraged to believe—made him worthy of respect, if not admiration. Then Brian Kelly stepped up to the podium.