Flemmi details favors from FBI

Says Bulger left town after getting tip from Morris

On the witness stand in federal court yesterday, gangster-turned-informant Stephen Flemmi explained for the first time how his longtime criminal sidekick James ``Whitey'' Bulger was able to leave town before the law came calling: He was tipped off by FBI supervisor John Morris.

Answering the question that has lingered since last summer -- when Flemmi first contended in an affidavit that someone in the FBI gave him and Bulger a head start -- Flemmi laid the blame at the feet of Morris, a now-retired agent who earlier this year admitted taking payoffs from the two men.

For nearly four hours the career criminal, whose double life exposed the shadowy world where lawmen and outlaws collude, described three decades of being alerted to investigations and indictments -- the reward, he claimed, for helping the FBI bring down the Mafia.

``We would be protected and we would not be prosecuted for anything we did on their behalf, at their behest,'' said Flemmi, who was unmasked as an informant last spring, shortly before he dragged the murky methods of the FBI into the glare of the courtroom to try to get charges against him dropped.

As the crowning defense witness in the months-long hearings, Flemmi hopes to persuade US District Judge Mark L. Wolf to drop extortion and racketeering charges brought against him, Bulger, and the local Mafia hierarchy in 1995 because of the deal they had with the FBI.

In April, testifying under immunity, Morris denied that he warned Bulger and Flemmi about the January 1995 indictments. But he confessed to taking $7,000 in payoffs from the pair, admitted he warned Flemmi to avoid a bookmaker under investigation, and helped Bulger and Flemmmi dodge indictments for fixing horse races.

But Flemmi said that Morris, who retired from the FBI at the end of 1995, was not the only bureau agent or supervisor looking out for him. Among Flemmi's assertions yesterday:

Former FBI organized crime supervisor James Ring, Morris's successor, phoned Flemmi at his mother's house in December 1984 to let Flemmi know his phone and that of his associate, George Kaufman, were going to be tapped as part of an investigation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Quincy police. The investigation collapsed four months later after Bulger found a bug in his car.

Ring, according to Flemmi, told Bulger in October 1986 that Boston police Lieutenant James Cox, who was cooperating with the FBI in a probe of police corruption, was ``wired'' -- a warning for Bulger to stay away.

Former FBI agent H. Paul Rico phoned Flemmi early one morning in September 1969 and told him he was about to be indicted for blowing up the car of a Boston lawyer, and, Flemmi said, ``suggested that me and my friend leave immediately.'' After four years on the lam, Flemmi said, Rico persuaded him to return to Boston. A federal fugitive warrant for him was withdrawn, Flemmi said, through the efforts of a former FBI handler, Dennis Condon.

Former agent John Connolly, Flemmi's longtime handler, confirmed to him that he and Bulger were targets in a South Boston drug investigation in 1988 and 1989. Connolly also allegedly shared the identity of other informants with Flemmi.

Bulger learned about a listening device planted in a garage near North Station where they conducted criminal business from Connolly, who Flemmi said conveyed the message from Jeremiah O'Sullivan, then head of the New England Organized Crime Strike Force. Flemmi said he also learned about the bug from now-deceased state trooper John Naimovich, who was acquitted in June 1989 of leaking confidential information to an informant.

Reached by phone yesterday, Ring, who testified for 10 days earlier this summer, had no comment on Flemmi's testimony. He said the ``appropriate, professional response'' was to say nothing since Wolf has not yet ruled.

But Flemmi's allegations, both revived and new, brought a swift and united response from US Attorney Donald K. Stern and Barry W. Mawn, the special agent in charge of the Boston office of the FBI.

Stern and Mawn had requested an investigation into Flemmi's claims by the Justice Department and the FBI when they first surfaced last summer. That report has never been made public.

Meanwhile, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut has been named to investigate whether present or past FBI officials engaged in criminal misconduct.

Stern continued to insist that the actions of rogue agents did not provide Flemmi or his co-defendants with a valid legal basis for challenging the charges brought against them.

``I think it's very frustrating,'' said Mawn, who took over the Boston office two years ago. ``It does anger us somewhat'' because ``this is activity that's gone on in the past . . . coloring all the good the Boston FBI has done for the last 20, 30 years.''

Flemmi, who traded in the black and white jogging suit that he wears to court on most days for a herringbone sport jacket, white shirt, and tie, corroborated much of what Morris and others testified to earlier this year: the cozy dinner parties, the exchange of Christmas gifts.

``It wasn't expensive gifts where you're looking for something in return. It wasn't like that at all,'' Flemmi said. Once, he said, Connolly gave him a book: ``What Cops Know and Don't Tell.''

But he contradicted some testimony. Flemmi said Morris's bribe was only $5,000, but he failed to mention an extra $1,000 Morris said was hidden at the bottom of a case of wine and another $1,000 given to him to fly his girlfriend to an out-of-state conference.

And he maintained that Morris had told him and Bulger they could ``do anything as long as you don't clip anyone.'' Morris denied making that statement.

After Morris made that remark, Flemmi testified, ``I asked if we could shake hands. We shook hands and Jim Bulger shook his hand.''

But Flemmi denied that former Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger, Whitey Bulger's brother, had wandered into a dinner meeting that his brother and Flemmi were having with their FBI handlers.