Ex-FBI agent tells of '81 probe
Agency was wary of Bulger, he says
A retired FBI official who has been critical of the agency's handling of gangsters James ``Whitey" Bulger and Stephen ``The Rifleman" Flemmi testified yesterday that the FBI coined a phrase for agents who got too cozy with their informants: ``Going native."
Robert Fitzpatrick , who taught a course for FBI agents on the psychology of informants, said ``going native" is when an agent becomes friends with an informant, loses objectivity, and ``might be sharing information they shouldn't."
In fact, Fitzpatrick said, when he arrived as second-in-command of the FBI's Boston office in 1981, there was a high-level, internal investigation underway into whether Bulger's FBI handlers had leaked him information that compromised a State Police investigation of Bulger and other underworld leaders.
Fitzpatrick wasn't asked whether there were concerns in the FBI in the 1980s that Bulger's handlers were ``going native."
Fitzpatrick was called to testify yesterday in US District Court in Boston in a $50 million wrongful death suit that the family of Quincy fisherman John McIntyre has filed against the government. He's expected to resume testifying today. McIntyre's mother, Emily, and brother, Christopher, assert the government was negligent because of the FBI's mishandling of Bulger and Flemmi.
Last week, Flemmi testified that he and Bulger killed McIntyre on Nov. 30, 1984, because their handler, former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr., warned them that McIntyre was cooperating against them. McIntyre had been involved in an unsuccessful plot by Bulger and his associates to ship seven tons of weapons to the outlawed Irish Republican Army and began cooperating with the US Customs Service and the FBI about six weeks before his slaying.
Connolly is serving a 10-year sentence for his 2002 racketeering conviction. He was found guilty of warning Bulger to flee just before the gangster's 1995 indictment on racketeering and extortion charges. Bulger remains a fugitive.
Fitzpatrick, who served as special agent-in-charge of the FBI's Boston office from 1981 to 1986, said the FBI's priority at the time was targeting members of La Cosa Nostra, commonly known as the Mafia. Cultivating organized crime informants was critical to that mission, he said.
Fitzpatrick testified that he was advised in 1981 by the top agent in the FBI's Boston office ``that he was handling an internal investigation that was sensitive, confidential, and handled at the highest level," involving a dispute between the State Police and the FBI over Bulger.
The State Police had been bugging a garage on Lancaster Street, near the old Boston Garden, where Bulger did business with drug dealers, bookmakers, and local Mafia leaders. But, when Bulger abruptly stopped talking inside the building, the State Police, who suspected Bulger was an FBI informant, accused the FBI of tipping off the gangster.
``The accusation was that Bulger was getting and giving information against their investigation," Fitzpatrick said.
In his testimony last week, Flemmi said the tip had actually come from retired Massachusetts State Police lieutenant Richard Schneiderhan , who was convicted in 2003 of obstruction of justice. Schneiderhan was found guilty of warning a Bulger associate in 1999 that the FBI was monitoring the telephones of Bulger's brothers, William and John, in a bid to capture the fugitive gangster.
Flemmi is serving a life sentence for killing McIntyre and nine other people. He began cooperating with the government three years ago .
Though Bulger has been touted as a valuable informant, Fitzpatrick said, Bulger ``wasn't giving us information he could have been giving us." 