Bulger barbs no surprise
If I were Billy Bulger, I wouldn't like The Boston Globe either.
Over the decades, this paper has caused the former state Senate president, his relatives and his associates a lot of discomfort.
It was the Globe, after all, that broke the news that his brother, fugitive gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, had been an informant for the FBI. The paper also reported that Bulger worked out an elaborate arrangement to take a call from his brother just after Whitey fled racketeering charges in 1995 and felt no obligation to tell authorities about it. In grand jury testimony obtained by the Globe's Shelley Murphy, Billy Bulger said he didn't urge his brother to surrender "because I don't think it would be in his interest to do so."
"It's my hope that I'm never helpful to anyone against him," he said. "I don't feel an obligation to help everyone to catch him."
Partly because of these disclosures, then-governor Mitt Romney forced Bulger out of his job as president of the University of Massachusetts in 2003.
Then the Globe reported on Bulger's battle to boost his $179,000 annual pension by $29,000 after UMass gave him a million-dollar parachute, a battle he took all the way to the state's highest court and won. There, the man who felt no obligation to turn in his murderous brother said the pension battle was "a matter of principle." That controversy was not flattering either, even if Bulger was basically right on the law.
So it's easy to understand why, in a speech on Monday, Bulger called this newspaper his enemy, took delight in its possible demise, and described the idea that he might outlive the Globe as "delicious."
Still, I got in touch with Bulger to see if he really meant to take pleasure in the prospect of hundreds of people losing their livelihoods because they work for a newspaper he abhors. He said that he doesn't want anybody to lose their jobs.
"That's not something I would wish upon anyone," he said. Then he restated his satisfaction at exactly that prospect.
"When I get to the Globe's discomfiture right now, its desperate situation, I'm being mean-spirited I guess, but I'm pleased they're having a tough time, because that's how it's been for their victims," he said.
As ever, the biggest self-styled victim is Billy Bulger. He doesn't bring up the coverage of his brother, or his pension. Instead, what he can't forgive is the Globe's coverage of school desegregation in the 1970s that he says tarred his hometown of South Boston. And he says the Globe ruined his reputation.
He's especially miffed at a series of stories that ran 20 years ago, when a developer said in a lawsuit that the Senate president's law partner had used Bulger's name to shake him down for $500,000, and said that Bulger initially took nearly half the money.
At the time, the Senate president promised to fully explain the whole situation, but he never did. The story got murkier as time went on - the developer abruptly reversed himself, and investigations by the FBI and the state attorney general found no wrongdoing.
Later, the Globe reported that one of the investigations had been led by FBI supervisor John Morris, who later admitted to having taken bribes from Whitey Bulger.
The Globe printed all of these stories - the initial claims, the exonerations, and the lingering questions about whether the whole process was on the level. That is a newspaper's job. After all, Bulger wasn't just some anonymous shmoe. He was one of the most powerful men in the state, and he preferred conducting his business out of public view.
Newspapers exist to hold people like him up to scrutiny. Without the Globe, Whitey's corrupt dealings with the FBI might have taken even longer to come out. Billy might still be president of UMass, or enjoying an even more lucrative retirement without anybody knowing it.
No wonder he wants the Globe to die.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her email address is Abraham@globe.com. 