His loyalty trumps morality

Gamel, the FBI’s lead agent on the task force that finally secured Whitey’s indictment, asked William to urge Whitey to surrender if he heard from him. A few weeks later, in an arrangement designed to avoid detection, William went to an associate’s home to take a call from the fugitive. When he disclosed that call in 2001 grand jury testimony, Bulger refused to reveal what he told his brother, citing attorney-client privilege, but acknowledged that he had not urged Whitey to turn himself in. Testifying before a congressional committee in 2003, Bulger claimed he couldn’t recall the FBI trying to speak with him in early 1995, or for years afterward, about his brother.

Of course, William’s usually acute recall has regularly failed him when it comes to Whitey. Although officials at a London bank said they telephoned William’s house in 1997 to report they were moving one of Whitey’s safe deposit boxes — a box that contained $50,000 and listed William as the contact — Bulger told a congressional committee that neither he nor his family could remember such a call. Simply put, the notion that his memory failed him on matters such as those doesn’t just strain credulity, it shreds credibility.

Last week, William issued a brief statement expressing his “sympathy to all the families hurt by the calamitous circumstances of this case.’’ However, we’ve already seen the limit of his actual concern. In his grand jury testimony, Bulger, then UMass president, told investigators he didn’t feel any obligation to help them find his brother.