Ex-boss defends FBI's handling of Bulger, Flemmi

A retired FBI supervisor yesterday defended the bureau's handling of longtime informants James ``Whitey" Bulger and Stephen ``The Rifleman" Flemmi , saying he was unaware the gangsters were involved with murders and had a corrupt relationship with other agents.

``I thought they were involved in gambling, and I assumed they were involved in loan-sharking," said James Ring , who supervised the organized-crime squad of the FBI's Boston office between 1983 and 1990. But he said he didn't believe they were involved in murder.

Testifying for the government, which is facing a $50 million wrongful-death suit over its handling of Bulger and Flemmi, Ring said agents told him in late 1983 that they needed photographs of the two gangsters because they were suspects in the 1981 slaying of World Jai Alai owner Roger Wheeler in Oklahoma.

Ring said he told the agents that it would be a waste of FBI resources to send a surveillance squad to photograph them. Instead, he said, he told the pair's handler, then-FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. , to arrange for Bulger and Flemmi to show up at the FBI's Boston office to be photographed and fingerprinted.

Ring said he did not know anything about the FBI's investigation into whether Bulger and Flemmi killed Wheeler and three other men. But, he said that after Bulger and Flemmi were photographed, he told the agents, ``If they are real suspects, you come back and let me know that."

Later, Ring said, he was told that Bulger and Flemmi were ``not prime suspects" in the slayings.

Ring will resume the stand today in US District Court in the trial over the suit brought by the family of John McIntyre , a Quincy fisherman. The family alleges that the FBI's negligent handling of Bulger and Flemmi led to McIntyre's death.

Earlier in the trial, Flemmi testified that he and Bulger killed McIntyre on Nov. 30, 1984, because Connolly warned them that McIntyre was cooperating with the government and had implicated them in an unsuccessful plot to ship weapons to the outlawed Irish Republican Army aboard the Valhalla, a Gloucester trawler.

Yesterday, Ring testified that in the 1980s the FBI's organized crime squad was focusing on La Cosa Nostra, better known as the Mafia, as well as members of the Sicilian Mafia, who were entrenched locally. The FBI decimated New England's Patriarca crime family with a wave of successful prosecutions.

Though Bulger and Flemmi provided information about local Mafia leaders, Ring described them as ``outsiders, looking in " who weren't as valuable as informants who were ``made" members of the mob.

``Mr. Bulger was not the prized informant that I think he's been made out to be," Ring said yesterday. ``He didn't even know the Sicilian Mafia existed."

As for his opinion on Connolly, Ring testified that he did not recall telling FBI agents in 1998 that Connolly was always trying to ``hustle and manipulate people" and he did not trust him.

Ring said he suspected no wrongdoing by Connolly during the time they worked together.

``No information came to me that he was acting in any way other than an FBI agent should act," Ring said.

Flemmi is serving a life sentence for 10 murders. Bulger, who is wanted in 19 murders, has been a fugitive since 1995. Connolly is serving 10 years for racketeering.