No US charges against Bulger

Long probe is said to reach an end

Federal prosecutors have decided not to seek criminal charges against William M. Bulger, marking the end of a six-year investigation into whether the former president of the Massachusetts Senate and the University of Massachusetts obstructed efforts to capture his gangster brother, James "Whitey" Bulger, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

The US attorney's office let the clock run out this week on a federal grand jury in Boston investigating whether William Bulger had committed perjury or obstruction of justice, concluding that there wasn't enough evidence to seek indictments and take a case to trial, the sources said.

"Bill Bulger has been a political football for six years," his lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, said yesterday.

Bulger, his wife, and children "have been through hell as a result of the focus on Whitey," Kiley said. "If they can get some peace that's a great thing."

US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan could not be reached yesterday, and his chief of staff, Robert Krekorian, declined to comment on the end of the investigation.

Whitey Bulger, 77, a longtime FBI informant, was warned by his retired FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., to flee shortly before his January 1995 federal racketeering indictment and has eluded authorities since. The international manhunt for the gangster, who is accused of 19 murders and is one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted fugitives, alongside Osama bin Laden, has brought intense scrutiny to his family.

William Bulger, 73, of South Boston, who became president of the University of Massachusetts in January 1996, was pressured by Governor Mitt Romney to resign in 2003 after he was publicly grilled about his relationship with his gangster brother by a congressional committee investigating the FBI's mishandling of informants.

William Bulger told the committee that he didn't know where his fugitive brother was hiding and had not aided him in any way since he fled.

One law enforcement official said yesterday that investigators suspected William Bulger knew more than he was revealing and believed "if you put pressure on him, then potentially he or his family would give up where his brother is."

The investigation had centered on William Bulger's testimony before the federal grand jury in Boston in April 2001. According to a transcript obtained by the Globe four years ago, Bulger testified that he had spoken with his brother only once since he became a fugitive, during a prearranged telephone call he received in late January 1995, and that he felt no obligation to help authorities catch him.

He also testified that he was unaware of any contacts between his fugitive brother and other members of his family, including his younger brother, John "Jackie" Bulger, who was later convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for impeding the fugitive investigation.

The grand jury, which expired this week, was focusing on whether William Bulger knew about a 1996 call that Whitey Bulger made to the home of Senate court officer Paul I. Dooley, while John Bulger and William Bulger's son-in-law, Michael J. Hurley, were present, along with former Whitey Bulger deputy Kevin J. Weeks.

In a legal battle that went to the US Supreme Court last year, William Bulger's former law partner, Thomas E. Finnerty, was ordered to testify before the recent grand jury about whether William Bulger knew about the 1996 call, according to sources and court documents.

The FBI knew from calling cards it had seized from a car abandoned by Whitey Bulger that he and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, had made dozens of calls to homes and businesses in the Boston area in the summer and fall of 1996, including one to Dooley's home, according to court records.

Prosecutors began calling witnesses to a 1998 grand jury to question them about the calls.

Finnerty allegedly advised Dooley, who was his client, to lie to that federal grand jury, prompting Dooley to not disclose that John Bulger, Hurley, and Weeks had been present when he received the call from the fugitive, according to court records and sources.

Then in 2003, around the same time federal prosecutors subpoenaed William Bulger's children to testify about possible contacts with Whitey Bulger, Finnerty allegedly advised Dooley to recant his earlier false testimony, according to sources and court records.

A federal appeals court rejected Finnerty's assertion of attorney-client privilege and ordered him testify in 2005 about whether Bulger and he had discussed plans to have Dooley lie to protect Hurley and the others and later recant. Last year, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, letting the ruling stand.

Finnerty did later testify, but it is unknown what he told the grand jury.

Hurley's lawyer, George Gormley, said Hurley, who is an assistant clerk in the Senate, was "mystified" as to why the federal investigation took so long, but was happy that it's over.

"This has been a tremendous and hurtful experience for him and his family to go through all of this, to be under the microscope for all of this period of time, even though they've done nothing wrong," Gormley said.

Kiley said that William Bulger testified truthfully before the grand jury in 2001 and before Congress in 2003, yet "there continues to be an inordinate or unnatural interest in Bill and his brother [John] because of his brother" Whitey .

William Bulger, he said, "is a model public servant that we all should aspire to be."

The statute of limitations on perjury and obstruction of justice requires that charges be brought within five years, but William Bulger's lawyers repeatedly agreed to waive the statute over the past year to give the grand jury more time to conduct its probe, in the belief that he would be exonerated, sources said.