Bulger family, friends probed

Frustrated by a worldwide manhunt that has failed to snare James ``Whitey" Bulger, federal prosecutors are investigating whether the gangster's relatives or associates of his brother, William M. Bulger, were involved in an early effort to thwart the investigation of the fugitive, according to several sources familiar with the probe.

A federal grand jury is focusing on allegations that William Bulger's longtime friend and former law partner, Thomas E. Finnerty, advised a client to lie to a federal grand jury eight years ago about a 1996 telephone call he received from the fugitive gangster, according to sources and court records.

Finnerty's client, Paul I. Dooley, allegedly failed to disclose to the grand jury that three others were present at his South Boston home at the time of the call: William Bulger's son-in-law, Michael J. Hurley; Bulger's youngest brother, John; and the gangster's associate, Kevin J. Weeks, according to sources.

Such a disclosure could have been embarrassing to the Bulger family if it had become public in the late 1990s. At the time, William Bulger was president of the Massachusetts Senate. Hurley, who is married to William Bulger's daughter, Mary, was and still is an assistant clerk in the Senate. Dooley, now of Dorchester, also works at the State House, as a court officer in the Senate, and had previously campaigned for William Bulger.

James Bulger spoke with John Bulger, then a clerk magistrate at Boston Juvenile Court, and Weeks during the prearranged call, but not to Hurley or Dooley, according to one source. Another source familiar with the current investigation said, ``It has turned into an archeological dig at the moment."

The effort by the current grand jury to force Finnerty to testify about why he allegedly counseled Dooley to lie in 1998 and then in 2003 advised him to recant his earlier testimony, has sparked a legal battle that went all the way to the US Supreme Court, according to sources and court documents.

The Supreme Court refused to take the case last January, letting stand an appeals court ruling that ordered Finnerty to testify before the grand jury about conversations he had with Dooley and William Bulger, according to court documents and sources.

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found in July 2005 that an unnamed lawyer, identified by sources as Finnerty, lost his attorney-client privilege because he was involved in an effort ``to facilitate corruption and frustration of the grand jury inquiry."

The appeals court, while withholding all names, wrote, ``Learning of the perjury, the government is now investigating the possible involvement of others with that perjury and with other possible crimes."

Last year, the Supreme Court was urged to overrule the appeals court in a petition that described the details of the case, without identifying the lawyers or clients involved. Sources confirmed that the case referred to the grand jury investigation involving Finnerty, Dooley, William Bulger and others.

William Bulger, who resigned as president of the University of Massachusetts in 2003, refused to comment on the investigation yesterday. His lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, said that grand jury proceedings are secret and that ``I believe it would be wholly unethical for any lawyer to talk about such a matter at all."

Calls by the Globe to Finnerty, Hurley, and Dooley were not returned yesterday. John Bulger's lawyer, Peter Krupp, declined to comment

Robert Krekorian, chief of staff for US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, declined to talk about the ongoing investigation, saying, ``We're not going to have any comment."

James Bulger, now 77 and one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted fugitives, fled a month before his 1995 federal racketeering indictment and was later revealed to be a longtime FBI informant and charged with murder of 19 people.

FBI agents were closing in on Bulger in 1996 when they seized his car in New York, and found a prepaid calling card he had left.

The investigators obtained phone records identifying the telephone numbers of dozens of homes and businesses in the Boston area that Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig of Quincy, had called with that pre-paid card and others that summer.

Prosecutors summoned friends and relatives of Bulger and Greig who received the calls before a grand jury in 1997 and 1998. But some of those who appeared failed to share all they knew, and Bulger's brother, John, and Greig's sister were among several people convicted of perjury for thwarting efforts to find the gangster.

Dooley, whose South Boston telephone number was among those called with a prepaid card traced to Bulger, allegedly misrepresented the nature of the call and who was present when testifying to the grand jury in 1998, sources said.

The presence of the others at Dooley's house that day remained a secret from the government for years, according to sources, and wasn't even disclosed when Weeks began cooperating with the government in 2000 and John Bulger was sentenced to six months in prison in September 2003 for lying to federal grand juries about a hidden safe deposit box and other contacts he had with his fugitive brother.

William Bulger testified before a grand jury in 2001 that he had spoken to his brother only once since he became a fugitive, just after he fled, but did not feel any obligation to help catch him.

In 2003, William Bulger testified before a congressional committee that he didn't know where his brother was hiding and hadn't aided him in any way.

Prosecutors subpoenaed William Bulger, his wife, Mary, and their children in fall 2003 in an effort to find out who took a 1997 phone call from a London bank where James Bulger had stashed $50,000 in a safe deposit box.

Around the same time that prosecutors were pressing the Bulger family for information about possible contacts involving the fugitive, Dooley went back to the grand jury to recant his earlier testimony and testify truthfully about the 1996 call, according to sources.

Michael Levenson of the Globe staff contributed to this report.